Another demonstration held for recovery of missing student

Police believe Noureen Jabbar has joined ISIS but family says she has been kidnapped

HYDERABAD: The parents of Noureen Jabbar Laghari, a missing medical student, and human rights activists staged a protest outside the Hyderabad Press Club on Sunday, demanding the immediate recovery of the 19-year-old.

A second-year student of Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro, Noureen went missing on February 10. While the initial report of her disappearance was lodged the day after she failed to return home from the university, the FIR was registered two weeks later on the complaint of the girl's father.

Controversy surrounds her disappearance, as the police say she has joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) but her family refute this and claim that she has been kidnapped.



Noureen's father Prof Abdul Jabbar Laghari, who is a faculty member at Sindh University, complained that the police are misleading the investigation by linking his daughter's disappearance with her joining a terrorist group. He believed that his daughter has been abducted and called for a serious investigation into the case.

The family also held protests in Karachi and Larkana on Saturday. At the protest in Karachi they were joined by civil society and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Haleem Adil Sheikh. Sheikh had said that the police should use all their resources to find Noureen, as being a citizen of Sindh she deserves the same treatment as the children of any political leader.

Hyderabad SSP Irfan Baloch had claimed that based on initial investigations that the police were certain that Noureen has joined a terrorist outfit. "We have investigated … talked to her friends and teachers. She came in contact with a terrorist organisation on Facebook," Baloch had said, adding that Noureen's accounts had also been blocked by Facebook because of extremist content.