Woman flees abductors after eight years

Police search for teenage girl kidnapped by same gang

SHEIKHUPURA:

A woman who returned home eight years after she was kidnapped from Ferozewala tehsil has revealed that a 14-year-old girl of the area was abducted by the same gang six months back.

The woman who escaped from the abductors revealed the gang is involved in selling girls in other districts after kidnapping them from the area of Sheikhupura. She said that a14-year-old girl who was abducted six months ago had yet to be recovered.

Sheikhupura District Police Officer (DPO) Ahsan Saifullah told The Express Tribune that three suspected abductors, including a woman, had been arrested and a team had been formed to apprehend other members of the gang.

He expressed confidence that the kidnapped teenage girl would be recovered soon.

Talking to the media, Mehek’s family members said she was 12 years old when she went missing from Imamia Colony in the remit of Ferozwala police station eight years ago and could not be found despite a search.

She revealed that she was playing with children at the house of a neighbour named Laraib when she made her fall unconscious.

She said the woman then handed her over to a man named Fazal who raped her and sold her in Jhang district for Rs300,000.

She said she was forcibly married and now she had three children.

“My husband Qasair and his relatives used to abuse and torture me,” she added.

Mehek said that the gang’s members kidnapped girls from different parts of Punjab and raped after threatening to kill them if they refused to obey them.

When she got an opportunity to escape after eight years, she left one of her children and begged along with the two others to collect the fare for returning home.

She said she had informed the police about her ordeal after returning home.

She said the kidnappers were hiding a 14-year-old girl abducted from Ferozwala six months ago in Jhang.

She said the girl had wept and sought her help but “I myself was in their captivity. How could I save her?”

She said the kidnappers sold girls for forced marriages after molesting them.

The police have registered a case and arrested three suspect, including a woman.

However, the girl kidnapped six months ago has not been rescued so far.

The complainant has also reportedly approached the Ferozwala magistrate’s court, expressing reservations over the police investigation.

Replying to a question, DPO Ahsan Saifullah said the team formed to rescue the girl nd arrest the remaining members of the gang included experienced police officers who would trace the suspects and the victim using the latest technology and information provided by the arrested suspects during interrogation.

Commenting on the case, Ambreen Ajaib, the executive director of Befari, a non-government organisation (NGO) working on human rights in the country since 1952, said the network of gangs involved in the crime was very wide and they use different tactics to trap the girls.

She said young girls were trapped by luring them for love or jobs.

The gangs had members in different parts of the country.

The rights activist stressed the need to eliminate the whole network of the gangs rather than some of their members involved in a particular case.

She said such gangs targeted underage girls from poor families that had difficulty in accessing police officers.

In many cases, such families do not even file a report with the police and feel helpless.

She said that when the 12-year-old girl Mehek was abducted eight years ago, her family could not lodge a case in the police station nor rescue her. She herself escaped from the kidnappers eight years later and returned home. The woman was still expressing reservations over the police investigation and she appeared in the magistrate’s court and recorded her statement.

Ajaib added that such gangs also tried to develop ties with political figures and police officers for protection.

The government needs to adopt an effective strategy to prevent such crimes she added.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2021.