Women fight over lost child

Girl rescued by conscientious college students.

LAHORE: An eight-year-old girl with a speech disorder had to be rescued by three college students after a couple of women began fighting over which one would get to ‘keep’ the quiet little child they found on the bus.

Muhammad Kaleem Akram said that when he and his friends Imran Sher and Gul Sher, all students of the Pak Polytechnic Institute, got on the Route 19 bus at Moon Market, they overheard two women arguing over the girl.

They stepped in to the women’s compartment to find out what was going on. One woman said the child was her relative.

The other insisted that she was lying. The first said she wanted the child to help her with her job cleaning houses. The other said she would take better care of her.

But Mafia, using hand signals, told the boys she didn’t know either woman.

They took her off the bus at Barkat Market and called Rescue 1122. The women fled.

Mafia was eventually able to communicate her home address in Gulshan Ravi to officials at the Rescue 1122 office. She was then sent to the Child Protection Bureau from where her father Muhammad Aslam picked her up at about 4pm.

Aslam, a gardener, said that Mafia had run away after fighting with her sister and he had been looking for her since 10am. He said he was extremely grateful to the students who had rescued his daughter.

Farooq Ahmad, public relations officer for Rescue 1122, said Lahore would be a much safer and nicer place if all members of the public were as conscientious as the three students.

Fiaz Ahmad of the Child Protection Bureau considered this a kidnapping case. He said none of the other 40 girls recovered this year were rescued in this manner. He said parents must keep track of their children in public places because there were lots of predators waiting to prey on them.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2011.