Kidnapped children

A rash of child kidnappings in Karachi over the past few weeks has sparked so much panic that is becoming difficult to separate fact from fiction. What we do know for certain is that at least 23 children have been kidnapped, from which only three have been recovered so far. The Sindh High Court has directed a special police team to recover the missing children as soon as possible. But there are also a lot of unverifiable rumours doing the rounds. There is a particular fear that children are being kidnapped from schools, with many parents now scared of sending their children to school. Even though DIG South Javed Alam Odho has categorically rejected this as untrue, the rumours continue to persist. One video of a child being snatched from a school van went viral on social media – although it later turned out that this was an old TV shoot. One reason worried parents are susceptible to WhatsApp forwards and social-media rumour-mongering is the complete breakdown of faith in official institutions. When people have no trust in the police and know that they cannot believe anything said to them by politicians, they are more likely to believe what they hear and see on social media.

The only way for the state to regain trust is by showing that it is capable of doing its job. This means that it first needs to come clean about the incidence of child kidnappings and show that it is making a serious effort to recover them. The only response from the Sindh government so far was to set up a special number that can be called to report kidnappings. All this did was add yet another phone number that no one will remember at a time of trauma. Instead, Pakistan needs to work towards setting up a centralised emergency service like ‘911’ in the US or ‘999’ in the UK. We need to completely change how we treat the relationship between citizens and law-enforcement officials. Even something as basic as filling out an FIR is made as difficult as possible by the police. One reason so many crimes, including child kidnappings, go unreported is because there is such little faith in the police and dealing with them can be so burdensome. It is past time for law enforcement to recognise that the problem is on their end and that it has empowered criminals and kidnappers.