Woman admits to abducting daughter

Mother confesses that she staged the kidnapping for money.

FAISALABAD: The mother of a four-year-old girl who abducted from Latif Park six days ago, on Wednesday confessed that she had staged the kidnapping for the money.

Samina, the mother, narrated the story to her husband Sohail after their daughter was recovered from Allied Hospital. She returned the money to her husband after which he decided not to pursue a criminal case against her which was originally registered against an unidentified kidnapper at the Jhang police station.

According to Lyallpur Town superintendent of police, Zameerul Haq, Samina abducted her daughter, Areesha, on Saturday when she was taking her to a tuition centre. SP Haq said that Samina had come home and informed her husband that some unidentified men had kidnapped their daughter and that they had demanded a cash payment in random for her to be returned.

The couple, he said, registered a kidnapping case at the Jhang bazaar police station.

Samina later told her husband that the kidnappers had called and were demanding Rs300,000 in ransom.

She said that the kidnappers were asking for them to drop off half of the amount at a location in Lahore within the next two days.

The couple, along with Jhang bazaar station house officer (SHO) Rana Farukh Waheed and other family relatives, had also gone to Lahore.

SP Haq said that Samina had disappeared in Lahore with the money that had been arranged for the initial random.

He said that she later called her husband and said that their daughter was at the Allied Hospital in Faisalabad.

The police recovered the girl on Wednesday.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2010.