Cop’s persistence helps reunite child with parents

ASI found 11-year-old runaway from Karachi in the capital

ISLAMABAD/KARACHI:

An eleven-year-old who was reported missing in Karachi over a year ago was reunited with his parents in Islamabad, with the persistence of a policeman who found the child on the streets of the capital.

Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) Fakhar Iqbal of the Kohsar police station told The Express Tribune that he came across Haider on Wednesday morning. Upon quizzing him, the child told Iqbal that he was from Karachi and his parents were alive. From his answers, Iqbal surmised that he was a runaway.

Iqbal said that the boy was still evasive. “I got him food and some snacks. I also got him new clothes and took him to a place where he could take a bath,” he said.

The boy then told him that his father ran a puncture shop at an area in Karachi called Johar Chowrangi. He would accompany his father to the shop. One day he got on a train and ended up in Islamabad, Fakhar narrated. “He told me that he has been living on the streets since he came here.”

The boy did not know his address but did share his parent’s first names, he continued.

The ASI took the boy around to various police stations in the city to see if there were any missing persons reports filed at any of the stations.

At several stations, including mine, I was told to hand over the kid to the Edhi Centre, said the cop. “But the child had told me his parents were alive. I had to try,” he continued.

Iqbal said he spent the next five to six hours on the phone, calling every police station in Karachi to inquire if any complaints were filed and first information reports (FIR) lodged in the name of the boy’s parents.

With no centralised national database, he had to do it manually. “I spoke to people at around 70-80 police stations,” he said. I gave them the name of the child and his parent and the tentative timeframe when he ran away from home, said Iqbal.

He then started the second round of calls to inquire whether any of his fellow policemen had found the case.

A naib-muharar (vice diarist) at the Gulistan-e-Jauhar police station, Masood, found the FIR for the missing child, said Iqbal. “I asked him to do me another favour and locate the parents.”

Within a couple of hours, he got a call from Masood in Karachi, saying the parents were at the police station.

Iqbal said he switched to video call after the parents’ expressed incredulity over the recovery of their child.

“The father was at a loss of words. But when the mother saw the child, she was overwhelmed with emotion,” said Iqbal. Iqbal had found the boy early morning Wednesday. By evening, his parents in Karachi who had given up hope of ever finding him, were seeing him after over a year.

Ghulam Shabbir, the boy’s father, told The Express Tribune that he left for Islamabad hours after speaking to his son.

“My wife and I arrived in Islamabad on Thursday night,” he said. They made a beeline for the Kohsar police station, where Iqbal was waiting for them with their sons. Shabbir’s wife Faria said it was the uncertainty around her son’s fate that had made her restless. “I am grateful to the policeman who took care of our child, fed him and took him shopping.”

The parents pointed out that a local child helpline had promised them financial assistance for the trip but failed to deliver.

Iqba says if it weren’t for the persistence of two policemen in two different cities, Haider could have easily ended up at an Edhi Centre and his parents forever deprived of a reunion with their child.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2023.