- From Zainab to Farishta
The criminal negligence on the part of the police in registering the case of 10-year-old Farishta’s disappearance for four days is highly shocking. All the more so when police claims that SOPs to deal with crimes against children were devised and put in place after the much-publicised Zainab rape-cum-murder case in Kasur. Even the Interior Ministry and the PM remained unmoved till after public protests by the victim’s family and civil society activists in Islamabad and Mohmand, the native district of the family. Prime Minister Imran Khan in fact sprang into action only after political leaders like the PPP’s Sherry Rehman, Jamaat-e-Islami Amir Sirajul Haq and the PTM’s Mohsin Dawar visited the parents and castigated the government for negligence.
The arrested police officers had reportedly declined to register the case on the plea that the girl might have eloped with a boyfriend. Again, the family was reportedly asked if they were really Pakistani citizens. There is a perception that if police had acted swiftly to locate the girl, she might have been alive today. Police have now arrested three suspects. It was highly impolitic however to throw a hint about their ethnicity as no charge has yet been established against them.
All sorts of crimes against children are on the rise in the country. Last year the Zainab murder case rocked Pakistan. Now we have Farishta’s case. The present case is by no means the only tragedy of the type reported this year. Last year the media published several stories about the theft of new-born children from hospitals. The same year, a report submitted to the National Assembly’s Committee on Human Rights reported numerous cases of child rape in 2016-17. Last month, a study conducted by an NGO revealed that more than 10 children suffered some form of abuse every day in Pakistan in 2017-18.
The laws are there but the machinery to implement them is dysfunctional. The governments are unresponsive. Those belonging to high income groups live in well-guarded upscale localities. The major sufferers under the circumstances are the underprivileged families living in areas with little police protection where stalkers are free to target children. With little help from the police, the reports of their losses mostly find a place only in researchers’ statistics.
