By Hassnain Ghayoor

LAHORE: Abandoned by her parents, 14-year-old Mobeen Akbar got her jaw fractured late on Wednesday night in an attempt to flee the Child Protection Welfare Bureau (CPWB) where she claimed to have felt ‘suffocated’.

CPWB Manager Nazja Zeb said Mobeen was hand-ed over to the institute on May 15 last by the Rescue 1122. Quoting the rescue officials, she said, they had picked her up from Lorry Adda. “She jumped down from the window of her room on the third floor of the CPWB and suffered serious injuries on her face and got her jaw fractured,” Ms Zeb told
Dawn.

“I was asleep when she jumped down around 3am. I woke up by the screams and saw Mobeen lying on the ground almost out of her senses,” she said.

Lying on a bed in the west surgical ward of Mayo Hospital, Mobeen said she did not jump down though she admitted she wanted to flee. “I was trying to climb down the wall as I lost my balance and fell on the ground.

“I am not happy here (at the CPWE). I feel suffocated. I still want to go to my parents though they seem to have forgotten me,” she said.

My parents left me at a bungalow near Kalima Chowk. I used to do all sorts of house chores there. They always humiliated me and tortured me for one reason or another. I was sad but my parents never came back to know if I was alright where they had left me,” cried the teenager. She said she decided to flee the place out of sheer frustration. “I reached Lorry Adda to take the bus for Kasur”

Mobeen Akbar told Dawn Ms Zeb said Child Protection Officer Muhammad Amin was assigned to contact her parents. “It may take some days as she is unable to tell the exact address of her house. We have reported it to the main police station of Kasur.”
Mobeen said this was what actually she wanted. “I asked them a number of times to help find me my parents. But they did not listen to me and instead I was locked and was not allowed to move around freely,” she claimed.

The CPWB manager, however, denied the charge. “We never did anything which could hurt her. We have a timetable for every child there and we take care of all of them without discrimination,” Ms Zeb said, and claimed that it was not the first such incident.
She said some six months ago a couple of girls had fled the institute.

Source: Dawn

Date:6/25/2009