Policemen examine Shahbaz Taseer’s car in Lahore on Friday. (AFP)

Islamabad/Lahore, Aug. 26: Gunmen kidnapped the son of Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who was shot dead by his own police guard in January for opposing Pakistan’s blasphemy law, from his car on an upscale Lahore street today.

The Taseer family, which confirmed receiving threats from “the Taliban and extremist groups”, blamed the daylight abduction of Shahbaz Taseer, 26, on Islamic militants who hated the liberal Salman and have hailed his killer as a hero.

Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah too fingered “the militants of South Waziristan (who) come here and commit crimes” but the police declined to name suspects or cite any motives. No group has claimed responsibility so far.

Shahbaz is a director in several companies his father had founded, including Pace Pakistan Ltd, which runs huge malls; Media Times Private Ltd, which runs two English-language newspapers and a TV channel; and First Capital Securities Corporation Limited. He got married just over a year ago to the daughter of a senior Punjab bureaucrat and is the half-brother of Indian author Aatish Taseer.

Local media reports suggested that militants were pressuring the family to withdraw their case against Salman’s killer, Elite Force guard Malik Mumtaz Qadri. Analysts suspect that Shahbaz was kidnapped to increase pressure on the government to free Qadri.

Lahore police chief Ahmed Raza Tahir said Shahbaz had been provided two Elite Force guards but they were not with him today. “We will investigate this,” he said.

Shahbaz was in his Mercedes-Benz with a friend in Lahore’s Gulberg when the car was intercepted by four men who came on a motorbike and a Land Cruiser. The kidnappers beat up the friend and took Shahbaz away in their car, the police said.

“Many people saw the kidnappers,” Punjab governor Latif Khosa said. “They were not wearing masks.”

Salman Taseer was killed in Islamabad after he filed a mercy petition on behalf of Aasia Bibi, a Christian mother of five who was sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy. Salman, a member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, had also urged the government to repeal the blasphemy law.

Qadri, being tried in an anti-terrorism court, claims he acted on his own. Clerics and Islamic hardliners have demanded his release while few Pakistanis have condemned the murder.

Pakistan’s wealthy liberal elite were particularly alarmed by Salman’s assassination, sensing their lifestyle was threatened like never before. Reports said the Taseer family was planning to sell their businesses and leave the country.

Shahbaz has a brother, Shehryar, and a sister, Shehrbano, who is a journalist for Newsweek in Pakistan. Shahbaz’s wife Maheen Ghani is associated with the arts and fashion.

“This family (the Taseers) has suffered too much already, and given the security threats directed toward them in the aftermath of governor Taseer’s death, this kidnapping underscores the failing writ of the state and its inability to provide security even to those known to be at high risk,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Live TV footage from the abduction scene showed Shahbaz’s abandoned silver-coloured, two-door Mercedes-Benz.

The police said the kidnappers had dropped “a Triple 2 rifle” and that two lab tops and a cellphone had been found in Shahbaz’s car.

This is the second high-profile kidnapping in Lahore this month after the August 13 abduction of American aid expert Warren Weinstein, 70, the country director for J.E. Austin Associates Inc. Weinstein, who was working on a project in Pakistan’s militancy-hit northwest, was taken hostage by eight assailants in a pre-dawn raid on his home.