Police given till April 4 to find missing maid

Supreme Court criticises performance of Lahore police.

LAHORE:

A two-member Supreme Court bench has given the police until April 4 to recover a young woman who was allegedly abducted from a house where she worked as a maid, while warning that senior officers will have to “face the music” if she is not found.

On Thursday Justice Jawwad S Khawaja, aware that the police had yet to find the maid, observed that the bench had been hearing criminal cases for the last four weeks and the Lahore police’s performance had not been satisfactory in a single case.

The court also told off Model Town SP (Investigation) Ijaz Shafi for not being able to find Sobia for the last month. The SP and other officers said they needed more time as they were still to find clues as to her whereabouts. The court put off the hearing till April 4.

Ishaq, a resident of Nankana Sahib, had filed the petition seeking the recovery of his 18-year-old daughter Sobia, who was a domestic servant at the house of Attique, a resident of Shadman in Lahore.

Ishaq submitted that in 2010, he had asked Attique to let his daughter come home as he had arranged her marriage, but Attique refused. He said the man later told him that Sobia had been kidnapped. He said that Shadman police had registered a case against unidentified persons, but had not taken any practical steps to find his daughter.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2012.