‘Gift from God’: Kidnapped boy found 3 years later

Parents say all this time they thought their child had been killed.

BAHAWALPUR:

A 15-year-old boy, who was kidnapped three years ago from Rahim Yar Khan, was found lying unconscious on the roadside in Ahmadpur East, some 130 kilometres away on Wednesday.

City police said the boy’s hair and nails were overgrown and he seemed to have been underfed. He was taken to district headquarters hospital, where doctors said that he was out of danger for now. He was handed over to his parents a few hours later.

Meanwhile, the kidnappers remain unidentified.

City Station House Officer Rana Hakim told The Express Tribune that some passers-by had informed that police about the child lying on a roadside. He was taken to the hospital, where, the SHO said, the boy on regaining consciousness identified himself as Raees Azeem Bakhsh, a resident of Tibbi Laran.

He said the boy told them that the kidnappers gave him food once a day. He said the men made him do house chores, including washing their vehicles and cooking food. They would beat him if he made a mistake, he said.

A few days ago, he said, after dinner, they took him on a car ride. He said he fell asleep and woke up in the hospital.

The SHO speculated that the boy had been drugged. He said his parents were informed, who later told them that Bakhsh was kidnapped in 2009 on his way back from school. They said a few days after he had gone missing, they were contacted by the kidnappers and told to pay Rs4.5 million ransom.

The boy’s father, Waleed Akbar, said that they could not arrange the money and instead filed a complaint at the Airport police station.



He said there seemed to be at least four kidnappers as they had received telephone calls from four men on different occasions. He said they had threatened to kill the boy if the money was not arranged. They stopped calling after three months, he added.

“All this time we thought that they had killed our son,” he told The Express Tribune. “This is a gift from God”, he added.

Airport police told The Express Tribune that they had been looking for the kidnappers. They said the investigation officer had tried to record the calls, but they (kidnappers) had stopped calling. Several places were raided, but no arrests could be made. 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 14^th, 2013.