LAKKI MARWAT, Feb 28: Police claimed to have arrested four members of a gang involved in human trafficking here on late Monday night.

Police officials said that acting on a tip off, they arrested two men and two women near the city’s graveyard. They were identified as Jehangir, Sadullah, Naseema Bibi and her daughter Aqsa.

Naseema Bibi, a resident of Lahore, told police during initial interrogation that she sold her daughter Aqsa to the ringleader of the gang, Ghulam Nawaz, for Rs150,000.

“The accused assured me that they would pay the amount in Sargodha,” police quoted her as saying. Later she was asked to accompany them to Serai Naurang for receiving the money.

Officials said that the gang was involved in human trafficking and selling of women. They said that the accused had planned to sell the girl to an Afghan refugee for Rs300,000 in Naurang town of the district wherefrom she would have been smuggled to Afghanistan.

Police registered a case against the arrested accused persons and their ringleader and launched a hunt to for more arrests.

SEMINAR: Speakers at a seminar here on Tuesday urged health authorities to make hospitals fully functional and improve healthcare facilities to get support of people for making polio eradication campaigns a success.

The seminar was organised by National Research and Developmental Foundation to highlight the role of ulema in polio eradication.

JUI-F Senator Qari Abdullah, EDO (Health) Dr Abdul Ghaffar Wazir, WHO’s representative Dr Adnan Akbar Khan, NRDF coordinator Shahid Anwar and District Khateeb Maulana Abdul Wahab spoke on the occasion.

“People have lost trust in the state-run health facilities because of shortage of doctors and unavailability of medicines,” a speaker said. He said that provision of doctors and other facilities to the hospitals was not a priority of government.

“This is why the residents of the district question why government is focusing on eradication of polio instead of providing basic healthcare facilities to them,” he added.

The authorities could easily achieve the target of immunisation by restoring trust of people in state-run hospitals and health centres, he said.

Other speakers said that prominent religious scholars and clerics had declared oral polio vaccine safe for children so there was no justification to oppose vaccination of children.