Gang forcing abducted kids into beggary busted

Sep 25, 2013

SIALKOT, Sept 24: Cantonment police busted a gang allegedly involved in abducting children and later forcing them into begging, investigation wing’s Superintendent of Police (SP) Asad Sarfraz Khan told reporters on Tuesday.

He said police rescued eight children from their abductors and arrested 27 people, including 14 women, all from nomad families living in makeshift cottages along different roads of the Cantonment.

The children aged between eight and 12 years were abducted from Gujranwala and Lahore divisions years ago when they were toddler, the SP quoted the alleged abductors as having said.

A few suspects produced at the press conference confessed to having abducted the minors from Sialkot, Daska, Pasrur, Shakargarh, Narowal, Wazirabad, Gujrat, Hafizabad, Mandi Bahauddin, Gujranwala and Lahore.

The abducted children were tortured and made handicapped to make them potential beggars.

Police shifted three children to Allama Iqbal Memorial Hospital because of their serious physical conditions. The children are malnourished and in bad health.

No child remembered the whereabouts of their families, the SP said, adding the rescued children would be handed over to the Child Protection Bureau for their rehabilitation.

The police officer narrated horrible ordeals the children would suffer at the hands of their captors.

“A special task of income was assigned to every child daily,” he said. Those failing to meet the target would be tortured at the end of the day. The nomad captors would monitor children’s workings in residential, commercial, industrial and posh localities of Sialkot.

The gang had also sold several children to other gangs in different parts of Punjab, the SP said.

Cantonment police registered a case under Section 9/10 of the Punjab Vagrancy Act of 1958 and 336 PNC Act of 2007 and sent the accused behind the bars.

(Daily Dawn)

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