TOBA TEK SINGH: The three-year-old boy, who was kidnapped on Oct 7 by a boy of the locality and later dumped in a sugarcane field, was not only found within nine hours of his abduction but later he also defeated life-threatening injuries in hospital and returned home fully recovered and happy on Tuesday.

Hasan, son of Malik Abdul Rehman, of Bakshi Park in Toba Tek Singh, was brought home from the Faisalabad Allied Hospital amid police protocol. A deputy superintendent of police (DSP) was picking him while District Police Officer (DPO) Waqar Shoaib Qureshi was leading the convoy.

Scores of citizens showered rose petals on the child and policemen and garlanded the DPO and the DSP. People raised slogans ‘Police Zinadabad’ when the child was handed over to his mother.

The rooftops of the locality were filled with people to see the touching scenes and to honour the police which traced the child after arresting the kidnapper.

Hasan was playing outside his house on Oct 7 when he disappeared. As police were alerted they checked CCTV cameras and one of the city’s cameras of a bank showed that a boy on a motorcycle was carrying a minor baby after few minutes of his abduction. Soon, the police reached the kidnapper, 17-year-old Hammad, of the same locality, who revealed he had kidnapped the child, strangled him and dumped the body in a sugarcane field in Chak 323-JB, Qiampur, on Toba-Gojra Road.

He said he did so after the child’s family opposed his marriage to a girl of that family. The police arrived at the scene after nine hours and found the child alive. The police first shifted the boy to the district headquarters hospital to be referred to the Allied Hospital, Faisalabad, where Regional Police Officer Ghulam Mahmood Dogar also visited the boy.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2019