‘Where is our daughter?’
Villagers protest against police failure to find missing girl.
Villagers protest against police failure to find missing girl. DESIGN: SIDRAH MOIZ KHAN
FAISALABAD:
Scores of residents of Chak 244-RB walked 16 kilometres to the city district government on Tuesday to register their protest against Saddar police, who have been unable to recover a seven-year-old girl who went missing on December 22, 2014.
The protesters, including several children, women and elderly folk, shouted slogans against the police.
The girl’s father, Muhammad Amin, told newsmen that the police had assured them several times that they were making headway on the case. “But where is my daughter?” he said. A police team, accompanied by a DSP, arrived at the demonstration and told the protesters that they were doing their best to find the girl. Saddar SHO Malik Jahangir Khan said he had posted to the Saddar police station a week ago. However, he said, he was looking into the matter. “A case has been registered against two men from the same village...they are in police custody and we are interrogating them.”The SHO said that they were investigating the case from three angles: kidnap and molestation; molestation and murder; and that she might have lost her way home.
He said they were gathering evidence and had interrogated several residents of the village.
The girl’s mother said on December 22, she and her daughter went to another village to buy food and kindling. She said her daughter was walking behind her carrying vegetables. “I had a large bundle of firewood on my head,” she said. “I do not know when she went missing...it is when I reached home that I realised that she was gone.”
She said she had waited for her daughter for an hour and then went looking for her. The entire village searched for her, she said. “But she had disappeared.”
Published in The Express Tribune, January 21st, 2015.
Scores of residents of Chak 244-RB walked 16 kilometres to the city district government on Tuesday to register their protest against Saddar police, who have been unable to recover a seven-year-old girl who went missing on December 22, 2014.
The protesters, including several children, women and elderly folk, shouted slogans against the police.
The girl’s father, Muhammad Amin, told newsmen that the police had assured them several times that they were making headway on the case. “But where is my daughter?” he said. A police team, accompanied by a DSP, arrived at the demonstration and told the protesters that they were doing their best to find the girl. Saddar SHO Malik Jahangir Khan said he had posted to the Saddar police station a week ago. However, he said, he was looking into the matter. “A case has been registered against two men from the same village...they are in police custody and we are interrogating them.”The SHO said that they were investigating the case from three angles: kidnap and molestation; molestation and murder; and that she might have lost her way home.
He said they were gathering evidence and had interrogated several residents of the village.
The girl’s mother said on December 22, she and her daughter went to another village to buy food and kindling. She said her daughter was walking behind her carrying vegetables. “I had a large bundle of firewood on my head,” she said. “I do not know when she went missing...it is when I reached home that I realised that she was gone.”
She said she had waited for her daughter for an hour and then went looking for her. The entire village searched for her, she said. “But she had disappeared.”
Published in The Express Tribune, January 21st, 2015.