By Javed Aziz Khan

PESHAWAR: A gang of kidnappers, picking up young girls from parts of Peshawar and Nowshera, has sold a 14-year-old girl of Jalozai village to a law-enforcer in Rajanpur after she was abducted while on way to school in February last year.

A number of females went missing from parts of Peshawar and Nowshera during the past months and were either recovered after payment of ransom or were sold against huge amounts of money. Some of them were later recovered even from brothels.

Ruqayya, 14, a resident of New Jalozai near Cherat Cantonment, left for her school along with another girl on February 20 but did not return home. Later, it was disclosed that unidentified people had picked her up from the main Cherat Road in the jurisdiction of Pabbi Police Station of Nowshera district.

The family lodged an FIR at the police station concerned. Two suspects were arrested while police raided a suspicious house in Kohat, but the girl could not be recovered. The family later visited some suspicious places in Rawalpindi, Peshawar and many parts of the Punjab to find any clue to the girl, as her ailing mother’s condition worsened after her daughter went missing. “We later discovered that Ruqayya has been kept in the house of an Army soldier, Abdul Kareem, son of Muhammad Ali, resident of Fajalwali Kotla Dewan, Jampur, Rajanpur district,” alleged Ahmad Shah, the elder brother of the missing girl.

The family approached Kareem, who first admitted that he had paid money to a kidnapper against Ruqayya. “Later, he denied paying money to anyone, arguing Ruqayya had married him in the local court on February 20 of her own sweet will,” the brother of the missing girl said, arguing neither the solider had served in his area nor her sister had been to Rajanpur so where they had met. “We appeal to President Zardari and Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to help recover our young sister from the custody of the soldier,” Ahmad Shah said.
Source: The News
Date:5/7/2009