LAHORE: Crime against children is on the rise in the provincial capital, creating unrest among the public, especially the parents.

Two recent incidents involving children, one in Shadbagh and the other in Chungi Amar Sidhu, drew the attention of the authorities towards the issue of security of the children playing in streets.

A CCTV footage showed a middle-aged man kidnapping a three-year-old girl, Jannat, in Shadbagh area, while in the other the body of a nine-year-old boy, Umair, was recovered from a drain in Chungi Amar Sidhu.

However, the minor girl was recovered from a street a few hours after her abduction when the suspect dropped her near a mosque and fled the scene fearing arrest. Locals told police that as they questioned the unknown man who dropped the girl, he got confused and fled the scene leaving her on the road.

Earlier, Jannat’s parents had alerted the police after she went missing, a police official said.

Initially, the police termed it a case of ‘missing child’, however, the CCTV footage revealed it was kidnapping, prompting them to lodge a case against the unidentified abductor.

The police official said the sketches of the kidnapper had been dispatched to the National Database and Registration Authority to establish his identity. He said that forensic experts were also being engaged to identify and trace the criminal.

About the other incident, a police official said Umair went missing on May 16 and the family alerted the police when he didn’t return home till night.

He said some locals spotted the body of the boy in a nullah near Shanghai Bridge and called Rescue 1122 and the police.

During initial inquiry, the police confirmed that the body was of the missing boy.

He said Umair’s father Asif Ali was a resident of Faisalabad and he had come to see his relatives at Chungi Amar Sidhu.

He said the body was shifted to the city morgue for postmortem examination to know whether the boy accidentally fell into the drain or fell victim to crime.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2019