Pakistan Gender News Voice of Gender News From Pakistan
By: Munawer Azeem
ISLAMABAD: The Christian girl accused of committing blasphemy, according to officials, has been shifted to an undisclosed place from the Police Lines Headquarters (PLH) in Islamabad where she had been staying since her release from the Adiyala Jail on Saturday.
Tight security arrangements were made to take the girl to some other city from the women’s barracks at the PLH where she had been kept along with her family, the officials said.
A police official said on Monday that after leaving the PLH the girl’s family met a government representative who later went to the airport, fuelling speculations that the family might also have left with him for a foreign country.
But adviser to Prime Minister on National Harmony Dr Paul Bhatti said that the girl and her family had not left the country.
Mr Bhatti said the girl and her family had moved to the safe place selected by the authorities.
A police officer said two statements of the girl had been recorded – the first at the police station soon after she was taken into custody and the second in Adiyala Jail during her judicial remand. In the first statement, he said, she had admitted to having burnt some pages but in the second she denied having done so.
He said the investigation team would record another statement of the girl as some questions were still unanswered, like from where she had got the polythene bag stuffed with pages of Noorani Qaeda and a primer on prayers and why the complainant Amad Malik was sitting near the drain outside her house just before Iftar when the girl reportedly took the bag to a garbage dump.
