Three-year-old Hindu girl snatched from outside temple

Fed-up Kashmore residents condemn police and elected representatives.

SUKKUR: Some residents of Kashmore staged a sit-in outside a police station on Thursday to protest the kidnapping of a girl from Hindu Mohalla Wednesday night.

The three-year-old girl, identified as Anchal, had reportedly gone to a temple with her eight-year-old sister, Kashish, and mother on Wednesday. When the sisters stepped out of the temple to buy some snacks, three armed men approached the two girls, grabbed Anchal and managed to escape.

The kidnapped girl’s father, Ganesh Chand - who is a cable operator by profession - told The Express Tribune that both his daughters were eating snacks outside the temple when the armed men arrived on a motorcycle. The suspects reportedly first tried to grab hold of a boy, but he managed to escape, after which they grabbed Anchal and sped off. According to Ganesh Chand, one of the kidnappers, who was holding Anchal, fell off the motorcycle after travelling a distance of 25 to 30 meters. However, as people rushed towards him, his accomplices threatened to open fire at them, forcing them to back off and allowing the suspects to escape.

When informed, the police reached the scene and tried to trace the kidnappers, but to no avail. According to DPO Kashmore Syed Asad Raza Shah, the kidnappers had managed to cross over to Balochistan. He said, however, that the police are trying to find the girl as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the police have yet to register a case against the suspects. In protest, the Hindu Panchayat and the Shahree Action Committee called for a complete shutter-down strike on Thursday, when all the main bazaars and shopping centres in the city remained closed.

Hundreds of people, including Shahree Action Committee chairman Qadir Nawaz Jakhrani and Ganesh Chand, also gathered outside the police station and shouted slogans against the police, demanding that the girl be found immediately.

Jakhrani condemned the Kashmore police for their failure to control crime, especially the kidnapping-for-ransom cases. “Neither the police nor the elected representatives are taking any interest in working towards curbing crime,” he said. “It feels like that they [police and elected representatives] want us to leave the district.”

Traders as well as other Hindus live with the stress of kidnapping, said Jakhrani, who criticised the men elected from Kashmore, going so far as to call MNA Gul Mohammad Jakhrani and MPA Mir Ghalib Domki “indifferent to the miseries of their voters”.

While Hindu Panchayat president Mukhi Rano Mal was unavailable for comment, his son, Inder Lal, told The Express Tribune that his father had recently undergone a bypass surgery and was therefore currently advised bed rest.

Meanwhile, Hindu Panchayat (Sukkur) president Mukhi Eshwar Lal expressed his anxiety regarding the “lawlessness in Kashmore”, saying that “the Hindus are being targeted particularly in this district, which is condemnable”.

While earlier, law and order with regard to the targeting of Hindus was terrible in other districts as well, including Ghotki, Jacobabad, Shikarpur and Sukkur, it has become much better in most parts of the province after directives were issued by home minister Zulfiqar Mirza, said the district president. He claimed that the situation is now bad only in Kashmore district, where Hindu children are often kidnapped for ransom.

Sometimes, when the media highlights such kidnapping cases, it adds to the troubles of the Hindu community as “it further teases the kidnappers, who otherwise think that the Hindus are without tribal backing,” said Eshwar Lal.

Citing the example of the three young men who were kidnapped from Salehpat one and a half years ago, Eshwar Lal said that the case had generated so much media attention that the kidnappers eventually felt pressured and killed one of the men as a result. MNA Ramesh Lal’s cousin, Suresh Kumar, was also kidnapped one year back, he said, adding that the incident had become so “high-profile” that the kidnappers had opened fire at Suresh Kumar, who was injured.

Eshwar Lal appealed to the president, the prime minister and the home minister to take notice of the matter and post “honest and dedicated police officers” in Kashmore to control the law and order situation.

DIG Larkana Din Mohammad Baloch said that he too is personally vested in the matter, adding that the kidnapped girl will hopefully be found soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 26^th, 2010.