15-year-old sent to Darul Aman

DERA GHAZI KHAN: A 15-year-old girl was sent to a Darul Aman on directions of a magistrate on Monday. Police said the girl was the daughter of a police constable. She had climbed atop a mosque’s minaret in Bhatta Colony and threatened to jump off it.

Police said that several neighbours had gathered around the mosque and asked her to step down. When she refused, they called up the Civil Lines police. The cops helped her off the minaret and took her to the magistrate on duty.

The girl told the magistrate that she did not want to live with her parents, “because they implicate our relatives and neighbours in false cases”. She told the magistrate that she would not return to them and that she had stayed at a Darul Aman before, “to get away from my parents”.

The magistrate directed the police to escort her to a Darul Aman. Later, the girl’s parents told journalists that she had a psychological disability and “often pulled off such stunts”.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2016.