Harsh lesson: 3 men and a baby star in high school robbery

KARACHI:

Clutching her ‘father’s’ hand, a four-year-old girl walked into the Abbasi Public School at 11:30 am on Tuesday, and - in the presence of over 300 students and 18 teachers - walked out with five tolas of gold and Rs13,000 in cash.

Principal Azra Bano told The Express Tribune said that things were running as usual when a man dressed in shalwar kameez came in with a four-year-old girl he called Misha. He entered Bano’s office under the ruse that he wanted to enrol his daughter.

“It’s routine for parents to come in with their children to have them admitted, so I let them in,” said the flabbergasted principal. “Little did I know what would happen next.”

Within ten minutes of the man’s arrival, two more men followed, bearing weapons. Before they knew it, the teachers and staff were being robbed at gunpoint. The men demanded their jewellery and cash and threatened to shoot the students if anyone raised the alarm or tried to resist. “[I thought] the girl was very intelligent, and just as I was telling the man that I would put her in a higher class instead of the nursery, they took out their guns,” she said. “It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under my feet.”

The secondary school is a three-storey building near Korangi Crossing in Ibrahim Hyderi police limits and, according to the staff, this is the first such incident.

The armed bandits rode into the school on motorcycles. Witnesses say three of them entered the school while one of them waited outside, they carried small weapons and spoke in Urdu.

The school owner, Fida Abbasi, said that the men seemed to argue among themselves. They appeared to be divided on whether to rob the whole school or just the principal in order to lead the police to believe it was a personal enmity.

Abbasi says that while one of them wanted to get away with the five tolas of gold and Rs13,000 that they got off the principal, the other two wanted to sweep through the whole school.

Some unsuspecting students passing by the administration office were also held hostage.

While the school remained open following the incident, it will be closed on Wednesday (today) to allow the teachers and students to recover from the shock.

By far the most mindboggling part of the story, according to SHO Ghulam Mohammad Maher, was that only the principal was robbed, even though there were over a dozen teachers present. Not even their mobile phones were taken. He said that the case has been registered and an investigation was under way.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2011.