LARKANA: Relatives of a five-year-old girl, who was kidnapped on Dec 20, 2022, from Mirokhan Chowk in the jurisdiction of Waleed police station, and their supporters staged sit-in on SSP Chowk road on Monday in protest against police failure to recover the girl.

Farooque Jagirani, father of the hostage Bisma Jagirani, and others blocked the roundabout, bringing traffic on High Court road, VIP road, CMCH teaching block road, Government Degree College road and other roads to a halt, promoting police to rush to the protest site. GDA MPA Moazzim Abbasi joined the sit-in and expressed solidarity with the protesters’ demand for early recovery of Bisma.

Farooque told media persons that he managed to obtain CCTV footages and shared them with police, which clearly showed some women taking away his daughter with them. “We also handed over to police a number of suspects who were freed afterwards without police sharing with them the reason for letting them off the hook,” he said.

He said the former SHO of Waleed police station had tried to hush up the case and when the new SHO took over they approached him with the request to recover the girl but he too did nothing.

He said that police kept giving them false hope of the girl’s recovery after they staged protest on Jan 1 but made no move against the kidnappers who enjoyed support of a local influential person. The protesters called for immediate recovery of the girl.

DSP Assadullah Bhatti later talked to the protesters and the GDA MPA and assured that police were conducting raids to arrest the kidnappers. On his assurance the girl would be recovered soon, the protesters called off the sit-in and cleared the road for traffic after three hours.

In a similar case, police were still clueless about whereabouts of Shuaib Soomro, 7, who had gone missing on Jan 4 in Pirzada Colony in the jurisdiction of Haidri police station.

Ihsan Soomro, the boy’s father, had said during a protest on Feb 13 that he had received a call from the abductors demanding Rs30 million ransom for the boy’s release. Still, police had not made any move to free the boy, said the family.

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2023