12 children in Pakistan rescued from extortion gang operating as an NGO

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/28/12-children-rescued-from-extortion-gang.html

LAHORE, April 27: A joint team of the Child Protection Welfare Bureau and the police on Wednesday rescued 12 children from a gang which was operating under the guise of an NGO at Shafiqabad.

This is the third incident in the city in which a fake NGO has been found involved in detaining children to ‘extort’ money from their parents.A CPWB team, assisted by the police, raided the one-room office of the “Save Life Welfare Foundation” at Shafiqabad, Bund Road on a complaint and rescued 12 children, aged between 10 and 16 years, from detention. The police
arrested four people, including NGO owner Muhammad Shafiq.

Mujahid, a rescued child, said he visited Data Darbar last week where a man came to him and inquired whether he was lost. “I told him that I am not lost and I am going back home but he forced me to go along with him,” Mujahid told the rescue team.

He said the man took him to a one-room house where more than 10 children were detained. “Later, the man asked me to give him my home address and promised that my parents will soon be here,” Mujahid said and also revealed that the gangsters would “torture and abuse me”.

Child Protection Officer Fayyaz Butt told Dawn that Shafiq, Ajmal, Asif and Arshad and their accomplices would force children to go along with them. Later, they would contact their parents and demand money for ‘reunion’.

“The gangsters would abduct children above 10 years of age on the pretext of rescuing them so that they could contact their parents\guardians to extract money.” He said none of those children was lost; some of them had come to visit the shrine and others were labourers.

The NGO, he said, had also requested the Data Darbar police post to inform it whenever a ‘lost’ child was found.

Mr Butt further said the bureau had also raided two such NGOs in the past and rescued the children. He appealed to the people to inform them about any such activity in their vicinity.

The children – Jamshed, Adnan, Irfan, Shahbaz, Allah Ditta, Mujahid, Wahid, Qaisar, Ramzan, Fakir, Shamim and Jehangir – belonged to Lahore, Peshawar, Kasur, Pasrur, Sialkot and Gujranwala.

A case has been registered against the accused under the Destitute Children Act’s sections 34 and 35 under which they can face imprisonment up to three years.