Criminal childhood: 3-year-old ‘murderer’, 2-year-old ‘runaway’
DPO Siddique said that the Kotli Syed Ameer police had recently implicated a local villager Bashir’s three-year-old daughter Mehvish in a murder case. “The child was listed as the primary suspect on the report submitted by the petitioner. The report was submitted several months ago and police were looking for the culprit,” the DPO said. Siddique said that the matter was brought to his attention after the girl’s father Bashir made an appeal to him personally to look into the charges. “The police didn’t take her name down even after I took her to the station and they saw that she was only a toddler,” Bashir said. The DPO finally looked into the details of the case and acquitted the child by declaring her innocent and discharged her from the case.
Meanwhile, Kotwali Police remained unable to recover a kidnapped two-year-old Azan Butt despite three and half months having passed since the child’s parents filed a report. Some unknown accused kidnapped Azan from the front of his house while he was playing in the courtyard. When contacted, Kotwali Police Inspector Rana Nadeem Tariq told reporters that the police had announced Rs200,000 as a cash prize for anyone who could provide solid information about the child’s whereabouts. Azan’s father, Zulfiqar Butt, says that the police have tried to cover up their initial behavior. “For nearly a month after my son was kidnapped the police refused to file a case saying he had ‘run away’,” Butt said. “I kept telling them that my son was only two years old but they refused to file the case until I contacted the press,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 29th, 2010.
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