MULTAN, Nov 6: The alleged suicide of a teenaged runaway in the custody of an NGO has highlighted the need for an authority to monitor the activities of such organisations.

Mohammad Haneef, 14, left his parents’ home in Kasur a couple of weeks ago and reportedly stayed for a few days at Sehwan Sharif in Sindh along with some friends. Last Wednesday, he was wandering alone at the Multan railway station when someone apprehended him and took him to Idara Khidmat-i-Khalq in Liaquatabad Colony.

On Saturday, Mr Haneef allegedly “strangled himself to death” in a room of Idara. Police took into custody Idara in-charge Arshad Joya and his two assistants while the body was sent to the Nishter Hospital mortuary for autopsy.

The preliminary post-mortem report confirmed that Mr Haneef’s death was caused by strangulation. However, swabs were sent to chemical examiner to ascertain any extraordinary pre-mortem eventuality like sodomy. “The report of chemical examiner can take one week to 10 days,” said a doctor at the forensic department of Nishtar Medical College.

In his statement, Mr Joya claimed that Mr Haneef did not want to go back to his parents and committed suicide when the Idara called his labourer-father Mohammad Sharif. Mr Sharif arrived in Multan a day after his son’s death.

Mr Sharif told newsmen that being a poor man, he could not afford to send his son to school and was compelled to make him do odd jobs in cafes and shops. He said his son often went missing and then came back on his own. This time he had been missing for nearly a couple of weeks. He said his son was mentally stable and had never had suicidal tendencies.

He said an official of Idara Khidmat-i-Khalq came to him in Kasur the other day and informed him that his son was in their custody. The official demanded Rs2,000 as his TA/DA and Haneef’s boarding and lodging expenses. Mr Sharif said he borrowed the money and came along with the Idara man to Multan where he heard the tragic news.

According to the information this correspondent gathered from residents of Liaquatabad, Idara in-charge Arshad Joya and his friends do not enjoy a good reputation. They are infamous for seducing under-age boys. Mr Joya does not do any business except managing the affairs of ‘Khidmat-i-Khalq’.

His father, Mohammad Khan, was a porter blacklisted by the local railway authorities. Mr Khan established a branch of Lahore’s Idara Khidmat-i-Khalq in Multan. Soon, the Multan branch ran into controversies and Mr Khan thought it better to sit back and hand over the mission to his brother Rana Akram.

Later on, the Idara set up its office at Timber Market. However, last year, in the face of complaints that young boys were forcibly kept in illegal confinement at Idara, the mission had to wind up for a while.

A few months ago, the Idara authorised Mr Joya to re-establish its branch in Multan. A few weeks ago the then acting district Nazim Malik Amer Dogar raided the office of Idara in Liaquatabad and got some six teenaged boys released from illegal confinement. However, no further action was taken against the Khidmat-i-Khalq people.

The modus operandi of Idara people is to spot boys wandering around at public places especially at the railway station and General Bus-Stand, keep them for a few days and then approach the parents and charge heavy amounts in the name of expenses.

They allegedly do not hand over the detainees to their parents until full payment. As these boys mostly belong to poor families, their parents find it very difficult to fulfil the demands. These boys are not necessarily deserters. However, the Idara people can label any wandering boy as runaway.

The NGO has no qualified social worker or psychiatrist in its team and more ironically there is no official check on its functioning. When contacted, district officer (social welfare) Saulat Jabeen categorically said that no private organization could hold any runaway boy or girl on its premises. She said such boys and girls could not be lodged anywhere except at the Nigehban centre for boys and Darulaman for girls. “NGOs can only refer the matter to the social welfare department,” she added.

A former in-charge of the Multan Nigehban centre said NGOs were not authorised to offer rehabilitation services for missing, runaway and abducted children. He said such children needed homely environment for rehabilitation while the poorly-kept environs of the Idara presented the look of a prison. He said the Nigehban centre kept the destitute boys for as long as three months free of charge.

He said during his tenure as the in-charge Nigehban, he often requested the railway police to send any boy they found to the centre but to no avail. He did not rule out the possibility of involvement of unprofessional NGOs like the Idara in human-trafficking, saying: “It seems that the authorities have not learnt a lesson from the tragic episode of Javed Iqbal Mughal who killed 100 runaway boys.”