LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Tuesday issued directives for making children recovered in kidnapping cases undergo polygraph tests, amid growing public concerns over the safety of children as reports of frequent abductions continued to pour in.

The decision was taken when senior police officials presented a report about child kidnapping cases to the chief minister.

The report claimed that by July this year 767 children had gone missing and 722 of them had been recovered or had returned to their homes. Some 45 children have not been recovered.

A majority of the children had returned home on their own as they were never abducted, it said.

The police report (available with Dawn) showed that in 2015 and 2016 some 1,901 children went missing. Of them, 1,815 were recovered and 86 were still missing. The report said that 1,532 children returned home themselves.

It also stated that 795 children left home due to their parents’ harsh behaviour, 392 were lost and found, 138 fled due to family disputes, 111 were taken away by one of the parents, 93 were recovered during attempted kidnapping at the spot, 83 ran away due to maltreatment at schools and madressahs, 74 were taken away by their relatives, 51 were involved in beggary and bonded labour, 42 were abducted for sexual abuse and 29 of them were special children.

The report further stated that the missing children were found in different areas, including shrines, railway stations, public parks and bus/wagon stands. Some 167 of the lost children were staying at the offices of Child Protection and Welfare Bureau in different districts, including 105 in Lahore, 16 in Gujranwala, 13 in Rawalpindi, nine in Faisalabad, 18 in Multan, four in Sialkot and two in Bahawalpur.

In the month of July, residents beat up 21 people on suspicion of kidnapping in different areas of Lahore due to a surge in such cases. The suspected kidnappers were severely beaten up by mobs and later police intervened and took them into custody.

Police investigations revealed that the people who were thrashed and beaten by the mobs were not kidnappers.

One of the victims of mob “justice”, Mohammad Shahbaz, told Dawn that he was taking his two-month-old child for vaccination when some people stopped him in Baghbanpura on suspicion of kidnapping the child.

He said he pleaded to the people in the mob that the baby was his own son and he was taking him to the vaccination centre but no one listened to him. They first snatched the boy from him and then started beating him, he added.

He said he asked them to check his credentials and take him to his home for confirmation but no one was prepared to listen to him. In the meantime, he added, a police patrolling team reached the spot and rescued him.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Operations Dr Haider Ashraf said that people would not be allowed to take law into their own hands.

He said that all the people who were beaten by the mobs in different areas of the city on suspicion of kidnapping children were innocent.

He said most of the children left their homes due to bad attitude of their parents or teachers and they were taking measures to eradicate fear from citizens.

The DIG said no child kidnapper gang was operating in the city and parents of the children who went missing had not received any ransom call.

He said all SPs had been directed to hold meetings with local government representatives of their respective areas to guide the public not to take law into their own hands.

Meanwhile, the provincial government is considering introducing a digital ‘Child Abduction Alert System’ for collection and dissemination of data on missing children so that relevant authorities can take timely and appropriate action.

The system, which is being devised by the Chief Minister’s Special Monitoring Unit (law and order) and the Counter-Terrorism Wing, would be implemented through the establishment of Child Safety Information Unit at the Child Protection and Welfare Bureau.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2016