KASUR: Chunian police on Sunday arrested 12 more suspected in connection with rape-cum-murder of three boys of whose bodies were found from sand dunes near Chunian bypass about one week back.

The total number of arrests has now reached 20 and all the suspects belong to Chunian. From the number of arrests it seems the police have directly got involved interrogation instead of depending on investigation, which did not need arrests, at least at such a massive level.

About 300 farmers under the flag of Kisan Ittehad staged a protest demonstration near Chunian Sugar Mills against the failure of police to find out the culprits despite the lapse of one week of the incident. Tabbasum Pervez led the protesters who were holding placards and banners.

Police also claimed to have done DNA profiling of over 450 suspects. The suspects had been selected from the localities of Ghousiabad, Pir Jahanian, Tambowala and Allahabad bypass on the basis of the census lists that police had collected some days back. The suspects also included close relatives of the victims.

In the Zainab’s case some two years back, the main source to reach the perpetrator was the DNA profiling and the culprit was identified out of over 1,200 DNA profiles.

According to police, the tests were being conducted of the suspects falling in the age group of 20 to 40 years. They said the criterion for terming somebody a suspect was the 11 questions that they would ask him, claiming that police did not want to bother the innocent people.

Investigators had started geo-fencing of the site where the bodies were recovered and the place from where the victims were kidnapped.

District Police Officer Zahid Marwat, the head of the joint investigation team, cancelled a press conference on Sunday where he was supposed to share some information about the case.

RUNAWAY BOYS: The Sara-i-Mughal police arrested a former madressa teacher and recovered three students of a Kasur madressa who had allegedly run away to Sheikhurpura.

Rasheed Ahmed of Chak Blair had registered a case Sara-i-Mughal police, complaining that his two minor sons, Atif, 9, and Aneel, 11, had been kidnapped by Muhammad Mujahid, the caretaker of the seminary Jamia Darul Aloom Farooqia, Mega road, on Sept 13 and took them to Sheikhupura.

The police recovered the three boys, including Atif and Aneel, from village Bhiki of Sheikhupura. The third boy who was recovered was identified as Iftikhar, 15, who was also a student of Jamia Daurl Aloom Farooqia but was taken to Sheikhupura by Mujahid.

According to Sara-i-Mughal Station House Officer Muhammad Saadi, the boys and the suspect were recovered from a restaurant where they were working to earn money. He said the boys had run away from the seminary in the past too. He said the kidnapped boys told police that they did not want to study in the seminary while their parents forcibly sent them there due to poverty. Police entered a case under Section 363 (kidnap any person from lawful guardianship) and Section 365 (kidnap with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person).

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2019