Chen Yen arrives to appear in court. PHOTO: ZAFAR ASLAM/EXPRESS
Magistrate Imran Ameer on Thursday sent Turab Sherazi and Ali Imran Sherazi to jail at the request of SI Muhammad Arshad of the Naseerabad police. Appearing in court on behalf of Chen Yen – whose Muslim name is Maria – Advocate Haseeb Buttar urged the court to remand the accused into physical custody of the police.
Sharing details of Yen’s ordeal with The Express Tribune, Advocate Buttar said that she first came to Pakistan in 1999 with her maternal uncle and his wife to perform as an acrobat for the Lucky Irani Circus.
The then 13-year-old caught the attention of Pak International Circus owner Israr Hussain Sherazi and his sons Turab and Ali. They made her an offer for to work with them, which she refused because of the rivalry between the two circuses.
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According to the contents of an FIR registered on December 21, 2016, Yen and her relatives returned to their hometown near Beijing, China. However, the Sherazi family did not give up their pursuit for the young acrobat and contacted her in China, asking her to come to Pakistan to work with them.
This time she agreed to Sherazi’s offer and later returned to Pakistan along with her uncle and aunt to work with Pak International Circus.
But her stint was troubled. Yen said she had a dispute over wages with the circus owners in Peshawar. When the dispute cropped up again in Sialkot, Yen and her family decided to stop working for the circus company.
Yen further alleged that the owners threatened her and took away their passports. The family managed to obtain a set of new passports from the Chinese embassy and planned to return home on October 9, 1999.
Yen said that when they were having breakfast at a restaurant near the Daewoo Bus terminal in Rawalpindi on October 7, the Sherazi brothers came and asked her to come out. When she came out, they abducted her. Her relatives returned to China after two days, without Yen.
Yen further revealed that the Sherazis took her to Jhang and confined her in their house, where they forced her to work for them and would give her doses of unidentified narcotics. She said that as her condition deteriorated, the abductors started offering her Chinese food and shifted her to another house in Multan.
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On October 6, 2000, she ‘converted’ to Islam and married Kamran Alam, who works as a driver for Israr Sherazi. She said that she had no choice but to marry Alam as the Sherazi brothers had threatened to kill her.
In the meanwhile, her family continued looking for her. Her father came to Pakistan in 2005, but returned after a few days without success. Yen said that she had been left with no other choice but to live with Alam, who, she said, treated her well.
She told Rawalpindi police that in June 2016, she met Johson, a Chinese engineer, in a bazaar in Multan and narrated her ordeal. He promised to help her find her parents. She said that he later arranged for her to have a video chat with her family in China. On July 25, 2016, Yen’s sister came to Pakistan and met her.
Since then she had been trying to initiate legal action against the Sherazi brothers and filed complaints with Pakistani authorities but in vain.
Finally, with the help of her lawyer, she arranged a press conference in Multan on August 6, 2016. On her complaint, the Multan CPO formed a team to investigate her claims. The team’s report concludes that she had indeed been abducted from Rawalpindi and that legal action should be initiated in the garrison city.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2017.
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