Daily Times

Children in neighbourhood love to play on streets. Yet the streets of Kasur district’s Chunian tehsil and other areas might have become deserted after the discovery of bodies of three minor boys. The bodies of the boys – of them, two missing since August and the third one for the last three days – were found in sand dunes near Chunian bypass. Two more children of the locality have been missing since June. We pray for their safe recovery. The discovery of the bodies, though painful for families and friends, however will help them embrace the fact that the dear souls are with their maker. The deceased were between eight and 12 years old.

The incidence of serial kidnapping and killing after rape in Kasur district has sent a wave of shock across the country. People are still negotiating with the grief of such serial incidents which rocked Kasur in January last year. Over a dozen children went missing before the countrywide outcry shook everybody after the kidnapping and murder of six-year-old Zainab in Kasur last year. An extensive search for the culprit ensued. DNA tests of hundreds of people were conducted until the culprit, Imran, was traced, arrested and later executed. It seems that predators and pedophiles are again out, this time in Chunian, hardly one hour drive from Kasur, challenging the writ of the state.

Prior to the Zainab case, the district hit the headlines for a child abuse scandal where more than 200 children were forced to perform indecent acts, and blackmailed into repeating them for the gang that had filmed them in Husain Khanwala village. They also sold clips to organised child porn sites. The largest scandal of child abuse in Pakistani history was also able to provoke stern action after a nationwide uproar.

Despite making examples out of the culprits of Zainab case and Husain Khanwala village, the recurring of child abuse cases demands a wide study of the roles played by law enforcers, social scientists and civil society activists. According to NGO Sahil, child abuse related cases went up by 11 per cent in 2018 from 2017. In a way, every day, more than 10 children are abused one way or another. In most of the cases, the predators happen to be close family members, mohalla shopkeepers, teachers or tutors. Moreover, mostly families do not speak out against such cases as well. *