On July 7, a constable at Khazana police received a call that couldn’t believe: a man was trying to sell his daughter at a market on Charsadda Road.
The police arrested the suspect, who identified himself as Wasim and claimed the girl with him was his daughter. He went to on say he was a kidney patient, recent widower and that poverty had driven him to, or at least attempt to, sell his daughter.
He further told the police he was an Afghan refugee living in Bajuar Agency but refused to share any information about his relatives.
Upon insistence, and presumably force, the police managed to get a confession out of him, which was remarkably different from his initial admission.
The man was indeed an Afghan refugee but his family was settled in the Darmangi area of the Mathra police station. His real name was Amir Shah and the girl whom he claimed was his daughter was actually a 4-year-old he kidnapped a day earlier.
Initially refusing to provide the girl’s whereabouts at the time of the kidnapping, Shah eventually revealed he abducted her from Sethi Town, following which the police was able to reach out to her neighbourhood.
Habiba is the seventh of Afghan refugee Gul Haider’s eight children. She had strayed out of her house just after iftari on July 6. However, she is one of the lucky ones to return home.
Every year dozens of minor girls are kidnapped, cases of which are hardly ever reported in the media or registered given the lax attitude of the police. In Habiba’s case, too, an entry report was registered by the Paharipura police rather than an FIR, while the police made absolutely no effort to locate the child after she was reported missing.
After Shah was caught, however, the police showed residents of the area pictures of Habiba, who was luckily identified by her neighbor, recalls Gul Haider. He goes on to say that upon contacting the police and arriving at the police station at a given time to retrieve his daughter, he was arrested and put behind bars.
“Their attitude was completely inhumane and they refused to hand me over my daughter but luckily I have a police DSP as a neighbor and I called him, who then asked the SHO and investigation team to hand her over [and release me],” he said while speaking to The Express Tribune. His daughter, he added, was lucky to return home even after being recovered by the police.
The existence of human trafficking rings in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa that kidnap and buy girls under the guise of marriage and then sell them to rich people in Punjab and Afghanistan is common knowledge. This trade is widespread throughout the province and yet, they manage to operate without inviting any attention from concerned quarters.
Habiba was returned to her family after the police arrested her kidnapper. PHOTO: RIAZ AHMAD/EXPRESS
In June, another Afghan refugee, Kher Baz’s nine-year-old daughter Sakina went missing in the Scheme Chowk area within the jurisdiction of the Badhaber police station. Despite her entire family’s tireless efforts, she is yet to be found.
Kher Baz had to quit his job as a truck driver and take up another fulltime job: looking for his daughter.
“My daughter Sakina has gone missing and I have been searching for her for the past couple of months. How can I return to driving, leaving things in the present state?” the father of nine said, while talking to The Express Tribune.
Sakina is not the only girl who disappeared in the same vicinity.
On March 1, 10-year-old Ayesha was kidnapped just outside her house in Ahmad Khel, Badhaber, and was taken to Khost, Afghanistan, where she was sold her to a local malik for Rs200,000.
The malik bought her as a bride for his son. Fortunately, Ayesha’s kidnappers were arrested by the Jalalabad police. While in prison, they called their relatives in Peshawar. During the call, which was intercepted by intelligence agencies, one of the suspects informed his family that they had been arrested and had sold Ayesha in Khost. The information was shared with Ayesha’s family, who arrived in Afghanistan, bought her back from the local malik and brought her home after several months.![]()
Alarmingly, the police did not register any FIRs against Ayesha’s kidnappers, who continue to threaten her family.
Human rights activist Uzma Mehboob said that like so many crimes, human trafficking seems to be an established fact.
“Unfortunately in K-P, the police and even the government wish to remain silent on such issues but that is not the answer,” she said, while speaking to The Express Tribune. She pointed out that in Punjab, the media does not compromise on such issues and the government also takes appropriate action once a crime is reported.
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