‘Kidnapped’ for marriage: Missing Baloch girls found in Sukkur

The three sisters will record their statements in a Karachi court

SUKKUR: The three Baloch girls from Karachi who went missing on September 7 showed up at a Sukkur police station on Monday evening. Two of them have been married off to Jatoi men in Saeedabad.

The girls — 14-year-old Sourat, 10-year-old Sabina and seven-year-old Nagina — were kidnapped last month from their neighbourhood, Bhangoria Goth in Azizabad. The family accused a man named Saddam Jagirani of the kidnapping and lodged an FIR against him at Azizabad police station.

Jagirani apparently brought the girls to Shikarpur and handed them over to an influential landlord who kept them at his residence until Monday evening. Sourat and Sabina married Saleem Jatoi and Imam Bux Jatoi, respectively, the girls claimed in a statement given to Airport police in Sukkur.

The girls were kept overnight at the women's police station and were produced in the district and sessions court in Sukkur by Azizabad police to record their statements under Section 164. However, the judge gave orders to take the girls to Karachi, where their statements will be recorded by the relevant court.

The Karachi police gained custody of the three girls and left Sukkur to bring them back home.

According to a police official, Sukkur's Airport police conducted a raid in Saeedabad last night and arrested Saleem and Imam Bux. However, Airport police station SHO Ali Bux Shar refuted these claims. The girls appeared at the station on their own but were not ready to give statements, he said.

Shar blamed the Karachi police for interfering in their work and going directly to the judicial magistrate in Sukkur. Azizabad police took their lawyer and requested the judge to not record their statements and allow the relevant court in Karachi to do so, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2015.