Missing 14-year-old girl’s family receives calls for ransom

KARACHI: In a major development in the case of the mysterious disappearance of a teenage girl from Karachi’s Al-Falah area, her father on Wednesday revealed receiving calls for ransom from hitherto unidentified kidnappers.

Fourteen-year-old Dua Zehra Kazmi was apparently abducted around four days ago. Her father had already filed a police complaint against unidentified suspects. On Wednesday he claimed that he had received two calls for ransom from the kidnappers.

“I don’t have an enmity with anyone. I have received two calls for ransom from the kidnappers. One of the calls was made from a landline number, while the other was made from a mobile phone number on WhatsApp,” said the father.

After receiving the ransom calls, he immediately informed the police about them. “I have provided the phone numbers to the police,” he said. “My daughter wasn’t even going to school for the past one and a half years.”

The kidnapping case has also been registered on Zainab Alert. The girl has been missing for four or so days, but there has been no clue about her whereabouts since she had stepped out of her home to dispose of garbage.

The father said that they lived on the first floor, explaining that his daughter had gone down to the ground floor to dump their garbage, but she never returned. The family had suspected that she was kidnapped, and appealed to the higher authorities to take notice of the incident.

After the case was highlighted on social media, Karachi police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon visited the girl’s home to assure her family of complete cooperation from the law enforcement agency.

“We’re doing our best,” the police chief told the media after visiting the family. “Three special police teams have been formed to rescue the girl. Soon the girl will be with her family. We have no objection if someone from the family wishes to join the investigation team.”

A team of the Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC) also met the girl’s father. AVCC chief Zubair Nazir Shaikh said they have formed three teams, and they are working on getting CCTV camera footage to trace the suspects’ whereabouts.