PHOTO: FILE
KARACHI:
“He did bad things to me. I just want to go to my mother,” says a six-year-old girl, staring at the floor inside the Madadgaar Helpline office. The minor was a beggar in Manghopir, where she was lured from the streets by a man, she named as Haider Bengali, with an offer to send her to school.
“I never went to school but have seen children going there. I went with him [Bengali] but he never took me to a school. He would not give me much food and made me sleep on the footpath,” said the girl, dressed in dirty pink clothes, sitting beside lawyer Zia Ahmed Awan, who heads the volunteer organisation.
The girl was rescued when the police saw Bengali and the girl on the streets. They became suspicious and detained the man. The suspect is currently in police custody while the girl is living at the Edhi centre, as the organisation is struggling to locate her family.
The increase in cases of abuse against minors is alarming, Awan says. “Often the missing and kidnapped girls like her end up being abused and murdered by the perpetrators.” The lawyer was speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, sharing the data of violent cases against children that took place in 2012. Last year’s figures saw a massive increase as compared to 2011. About 2,964 violence cases were reported against children in 2011, whereas the number soared to 6,444 in 2012.
Awan blamed the indifference of the state and the police that has given rise to such crimes. The highest number of violent cases, 2,947, was reported from the Punjab followed by 1,818 in Sindh, 1,073 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and 606 in Balochistan. Madadgaar’s field officer Bushra Saeed pointed out the loopholes in the system which deals with violence cases related to children.
“There are only four female medico-legal officers at government hospitals. They only come to the hospital when a case arrives and for hours families have to wait outside, holding the lifeless body of their child just waiting for the doctor to arrive.” Police officers should be posted at government hospitals to record immediate statements of the victims, she recommended.
For now, even the rescued six-year-old girl has not had her medico-legal examination despite her claims she was abused.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 9th, 2013.
COMMENTS (1)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
I pity the poor little girl. This is very sad indeed. The problem needs to be properly addressed.