ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Police on Saturday recovered a nine-year-old child who was kidnapped from Lahore.
Umiar set out from his seminary at Qila Lachman Singh on Thursday when kidnappers drugged him, police said. The kidnappers then brought the unconscious child to the Faizabad bus station in Islamabad.
They left the child and went to have lunch. Umair gained consciousness and fled. A taxi driver on the way saw the wailing child and informed the police. Umair was kept in police custody after which his father a truck driver named Manzoor was informed of his son’s whereabouts.
The child will be handed over to his father after coordination with the Lahore police.
Child goes missing in Faisalabad
In a separate incident a 13-year-old child went missing from Mohammadabad area in Faisalabad.
The boy’s family staged a protest at Satiana Road and blocked it for traffic. His parent’s said that the boy had gone to study at a tuition centre when he went missing.
Police has taken owner of the tuition centre in custody for interrogation.
A wave of anxiety has gripped the province following kidnapping of 600 children from Lahore and other parts of Punjab within a short span of time. However, Punjab police has said that most of these children fled from domestic violence.
The Supreme Court is currently hearing a suo moto case on missing children,
Incidents of missing children from Punjab have been on the rise recently. More than a dozen children went missing from Badami baagh (garden) in the past few months alone. Last week, a child was discovered dead in the same area, who had reportedly been murdered after being tortured.
The police, meanwhile, maintains that not all of the missing children were kidnapped. Additional Inspector General Police Shahzada Sultan, citing statistics, said that during 2015 kidnapping cases of 1,134 children were registered in Punjab, of whom 1,093 were recovered. This year 681 cases have been registered, whereas 640 children have been recovered already.
Many of the missing children belong to poor families.