Rescued girl reunites with parents

A four-year-old girl who was recovered from Lahore earlier this month after being abducted from Rawalpindi 15 months ago has finally been reunited with her parents.

The girl, the daughter of a labourer from the Rata Amral area named Ajab Khan, left the house to go to a nearby shop in March last year and never came back. The police registered a kidnapping case on Ajab Khan's complaint, and reviewed the CCTV footage which showed a couple carrying the girl.

During this time, according to the station house officer of the Rata Amral police station from whose jurisdiction the girl went missing, the abductors took the girl the Lahore.

The couple who allegedly abducted the girl – Tahir and Sahar – kept the girl at their house with their kids. However, a Pathan neighbour recognised that the girl wasn’t part of the family, said SHO Chaudhry Riaz

“He probably spoke to her in Pushto,” he said. This, according to the SHO, happened within a week after the girl’s abduction.

The Pathan neighbour handed the girl over to the Chung police station. She was summarily passed on to the child protection bureau, from where a family adopted her.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2023.