Three held in Lahore for child prostitution

Children sent for medical examination, suspects handed over to police

LAHORE: A Child Welfare and Protection Bureau team arrested three men accused of running a child prostitution racket and recovered three children from their custody in a sting operation in Data Darbar area on Saturday night.

The suspects were handed over to the Data Darbar police who registered a case against Sabir Kala, Akhtar Ali and Muhammad Asif under Section 376 (punishment for committing rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code. The children, aged between 10 and 12, were sent for a medical examination.



These children were presented as prostitutes to the CWPB officials who had approached the suspects as ‘customers’ on Saturday night, CPWB Field Officer Fayyaz Ahmed told The Express Tribune.

Meanwhile, he said another CPWB team reached the scene and taken the suspects and the children into custody. The suspects were later handed over to the police, he added. “A sting operation was undertaken to arrest the suspects red-handed,” he said.

Based on his conversation with the children, Ahmed said the suspects had initially offered them money for sex work. He said they were later presented to ‘customers’ at a sarai (inn) owned by one of the suspects, Sabir Kala. The task of finding customers was assigned to the other two suspects, he said.

CWPB spokesperson Muhammad Waseem said that two of the three children had run away from their homes and were living on a roadside near Data Darbar before they met the suspects. He said the third child had met them near a gaming café he used to frequent in the area. “He joined the gang to make some extra money to spend at the café,” he said.



A CPWB officer speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that during interrogation the suspects had claimed that they enjoyed police protection. They alleged that they had been paying a bribe to the police every day, he said.

Data Darbar SHO Javed denied the allegation and said that the police took action against such crimes whenever they were reported to it.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2016.