Kidnapping case: Recovered girl was forced to work as housemaid, says police

Suspected kidnapper claims girl was a runaway; police doubt the claim

RAWALPINDI: A 13-year-old kidnapping victim who was recovered on Tuesday, said that she had been detained in a house and forced to work as a maid for about two months after a woman kidnapped her from the Naseerabad area on November 1.

T*, a madrassa student, went missing from Chorr Harpal and her mother registered a kidnapping case against unidentified people. She claimed that negligence on the part of the madrassa administration led to her daughter being kidnapped. A police source privy to the investigation said that T, in her statement under Criminal Procedure Code Section 164, of had said that she was abducted by a woman from Chorr Bazaar.



She added that the woman, later identified as S*, took her to a house in Westridge. She was detained in the house and was forced to work as a maid.

The police official further said that the girl was recovered on December 27 when she came out of the house when S was away. The police had been monitoring a cell phone number T once used to contact her mother. On Tuesday, when T came out of the house and switch on the phone, she was contacted by the police.

The police official said that the alleged kidnapper –S – was a teacher at a private school in Westridge. The official further said that S had denied the charges and was claiming that T came to her house on her own and said that she did not want to live with her stepmother. S claimed that T accused her stepmother of beating her.



The police official, however, said that S provided unsatisfactory responses when asked why she had not informed the police that she was caring a runaway child or why she had forced her to work as a maid. The police official also questioned S’s claim that T had “forced her” not to inform the police or her mother.

Further investigations are still under way.

*Names withheld to protect identity

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2016.