AMN/ WEB DESK
The statistics from the Pakistan’s Punjab Police have revealed that 3,571 kidnapped girls and women remain missing across the province. This came to light after the kidnapping case of Sobia Batool from Sargodha echoed in the country’s Supreme Court recently. In the police records, the status of these girls and women has been declared “not recovered”. No one, including the police and their parents, is aware of the whereabouts of these women allegedly kidnapped during the last four years from across Punjab.
The report brought to the fore a disturbing figure of 40,585 women having been abducted between 2017 and January 2022 from all 36 districts of Punjab. Out of these, 3,571 still remain missing. In the wake of the Sobia case being heard by the Supreme Court, Sargodha police traced bodies of 20 unidentified women from various parts of Punjab.
The Punjab police data has revealed that out of the 3,571 women still missing most of them had disappeared from Lahore. During last year alone, 1098 girls and women were kidnapped from the city betraying an alarming situation in Lahore.
The issue of disappearance of women and girls highlights the police’s inability or negligence to pursue these cases until courts order it to. With many of these girls usually belonging to underprivileged areas and families, the authorities don’t even recognise their kidnappings as such and instead dismiss them as elopements without an inquiry. The possibility of the abducted women being trafficked for sex internally or externally is not even given a thought.
Sara Sheraz, resident director of Aurat Foundation Punjab, told in a newspaper interview that generally, reporting of kidnappings is very low due to resistance from families, who lack resources to pursue the cases. Sex trafficking is also a factor here, but it’s not reported or probed and Police show an indifferent attitude, she added.