THE Karachi Police have arrested a young Hindu woman, Miss Kanta Devi, under the Public Safety Ordinance. She is suspected of spying for a foreign country. Miss Kanta Devi, quite a social figure, lived by herself in a well-appointed flat near Mere Weather Tower on Bunder Road. She was known to some as the wife of a leather merchant, to others as a rich woman who was well looked after by her close relatives doing business in Bahrein and Teheran.

She mixed freely with many officers and men of the Pakistan Government and the police believe [she] ferreted out useful information in the course of social contacts for transmission to her foreign employers. In her statement to the police she has given herself as the daughter of one Unger Singh of Karachi, who is dead. … She was also a member of the Om Mandli organisation … who ruined many Hindu families by teaching young girls to hate their husbands and parents.

[Meanwhile, as reported from Paris,] The Social Committee of the United Nations Gen­­eral Assembly began urgent consideration of an international treaty to control production and distribution of new synthetic drugs.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2023