05 February 2004	Thursday	13 Zilhaj 1424

KARACHI, Feb 4: A group of miscreants intercepted two girls near the Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine on Tuesday, the second day of Eidul Azha, and pawed them.

Police and Edhi volunteers rescued the girls. The police made no arrests.

A spokesman for the Edhi Foundation, Rizwan Edhi, said the miscreants had torn the clothes of the girls. "Our ambulance staff collected their dupatta from the ground and covered their bodies," he claimed. However, ASP Omar Shahid Hamid disputed Mr Edhi's statement. "There is no denying the fact that the girls were harassed by the miscreants. But their clothes were unimpaired," he said.

The station house officer of the Boating Basin police supported the statement of his superior officer. He said: "Police officials were on duty barely 500 yards from the scene of the crime. They immediately came to the rescue of the girls, whose clothes were not torn. We later sent them home," he said.

An incident of similar nature occurred over two months ago on the second day of Eidul Fitr when some miscreants harassed women visitors at Funland in Clifton. Scuffles broke out as the youths accompanying the women came to blows with the miscreants.

Law- enforcement agencies booked 29 people for rioting, damaging property and attacking the police. No follow-up was action by the police despite the fact that Sindh chief secretary Mutawakil Qazi had sought a detailed report about the incident.

The police told Dawn on Wednesday that the two sisters, in their late 20s, worked as maidservants at a bungalow in Block 4 of Clifton. "Getting off work on Tuesday evening, they, accompanied by their father, walked towards the shrine to catch a bus for Saeedabad. They cried out for help when some miscreants accosted and pawed them. The police officials on duty baton-charged the miscreants and rescued the girls," they recalled.

They said an Edhi ambulance, which was on duty nearby, had been called in. The Edhi ambulance driver, Ahmad Zaheer Khan, said: "The ambulance took the girls and their father to the bungalow where they worked. Their clothes were torn and they were crying bitterly. The police then asked me to leave," he said.

The station house officer of the Boating Basin police said: "We took the girls to the bungalow where they worked. Their clothes were not torn. The police later sent them home on a cab at their request," he said.

Explaining why the police arrested nobody, the police official said: "A crowd had collected there and we could not identify those who were responsible for the incident."