RAWALPINDI: The administrations of two primary schools, one for girls and the other for boys, have received abduction threats regarding their students. These threatening calls were made from the Karak district and Afghanistan, the principal of the boys’ school and the police said on Thursday.

The principal of a boys’ primary school and his wife, who teaches at a girls’ primary school in Rawalpindi, turned to the police after the caller threatened to kidnap schoolchildren from their schools soon.

“We were getting ready for work when my wife received the latest threatening call on Wednesday, between 6:30 and 7am. The caller did not disclose his identity, but he was not speaking Urdu fluently. He threatened to kidnap children from both schools,” Haroon Yousuf, the boys’ school principal, said.

He said his wife had been complaining to him for the last month of anonymous calls to her mobile phone. She had told him she could not understand the caller and had ignored them.

“The caller was making short calls of 30 seconds or less. My wife couldn’t understand what he was saying, but she got worried when he talked about kidnapping students,” Mr Yousuf said. He added that the caller did not demand any money or anything else, and just insisted he would kidnap schoolchildren.

Since the police were informed, four police officials – two in plainclothes and two in uniform – have been deployed outside the schools during school hours to keep an eye on people roaming around the school.

“We have briefed schoolteachers on the threats and are taking precautionary measures for the children, but we did not tell them they were under threat of being abducted because it would spark panic among them as well as their parents,” Mr Yousuf said.

He added that he had written to the education department asking for a security guard to be provided and was informed that primary schools were not authorised to be allocated private security guards.

Station House Officer (SHO) Ishtiaq Cheema told Dawn a case has been registered against an unidentified caller based on the principal’s complaint, and an investigation had been launched.

“Since I am busy with security for the cricket match, it is too early to say whether or not the threats were genuine. The real circumstances can only be known after the investigation is launched,” he said.

A preliminary police investigation suggested that the schoolteachers had received threatening phone calls for the last month origination from Karak, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. However, the latest call was made from Afghanistan. Mr Yousuf told Dawn: “Due to security issues, the number of students has been falling day by day.”

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2016