Court reunites five missing girls with parents

A magistrate on Wednesday sent five teenage girls who were recovered from Nazimabad after being missing for over a month with their parents after they expressed their wish to go with them.

Three sisters — Aasia, 19, Mariam, 17, Khadija, 15, and their two cousins Sughra, 19, and Kubra, 14 -- were traced by the police on Tuesday, more than a month after they disappeared from Saeedabad on February 15.

On Wednesday, investigating officer Irshad Ahmed Leghari produced the recovered girls before Judicial Magistrate (West) Zarmina Leghari.

He stated that the alleged abducted girls were recovered from a garment factory in Hadi Market in the Nazimabad area, where they were working.

In their statement to the police, the IO said the girls denied that they were kidnapped by anyone or forcibly kept in wrongful confinement. They had been working at the factory of their own accord, he added.

The police officer also produced two arrested suspects, Mumtaz Ali, a contractor at the factory, and Muhammad Rashid. He mentioned that a call had been received on Rashid’s mobile phone from the girls’ cellphone.

The magistrate recorded statements of the girls one by one under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) in her chamber. The girls stated that they left their home after being scolded by parents and expressed their willingness to return home.

Observing that the girls being sui juris were free to go wherever they want, the magistrate allowed them to go with their parents. The suspects’ lawyer Nazaqat Ali Mirani contended that no case was made out against his clients after the statement of the girls, requesting the court to release them.

The magistrate discharged both the suspects under Section 63 of the criminal procedure code subject to furnishing a PR bond in the sum of Rs50,000 each.

An FIR was lodged at the Saeedabad police station under Section 365-B (kidnapping, abducting or inducing woman to compel for marriage etc) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) against unknown persons on the complaint of Zamir, the father of the three of the five girls.