Punjab Study

RAWALPINDI, Jan 23: The police have enlarged the scope of their hunt for the six students, including three girls, who went missing on Thursday under mysterious circumstances and decided to investigate some other pupils of the institution after parents of the missing girls accused the three boys of abducting their daughters.

“My daughter Iqra Naseem, a 9the class student, was abducted by Waleed Ahmed, Abu Bakr, Hamza, Wajeha and Areeba,” said Iqra’s mother Kausar Perveen in her statement recorded with the police.

The police on Sunday took important record of the school into custody and carried out a raid at the residence of another 10th class student whose name was being withheld as the police suspected that he might know the whereabouts of the six missing students because he had friendship with three of them.

When contacted, Senior Superintendent of Police Yaseen Farooq said it had emerged from investigation that all the six students had disappeared separately after going to the school from their homes.

“It seems to be a pre-planned move made by the students. However, no involvement of the school has been found in the incident,” the SSP said.

Shamim Asghar, the mother of Wajeha and wife of a deputy superintendent of police, told Dawn that she had been desperately waiting for any information about her daughter’s
whereabouts.

She said her daughter’s two friends – Areeba and Iqra – came to her house on Thursday morning and took her along.

She added: “All the three girls were in school uniform and carrying their schoolbags when they left the house. They were in a good mood and nothing unusual was evident from their attitudes.”

Tabasum Shaheen, the school’s principal, whose husband has also been associated with the Rawalpindi police and founded the institution before joining the department, said they had taken the schoolchildren on a picnic to Murree on January 14 and the six students also accompanied them.

The principal said it was brought into her notice by her teachers that some boys and girls had been spotted taking photographs of each other and roaming alone during the outing.

“After that, I contacted parents of the students and asked them to take notice of the matter to avoid any problem in the future,” the principal said.

Earlier, the parents were reluctant to acknowledge that their children carried mobile phones but when the police were involved in the search they admitted that their missing children had cellphones which, however, remained switched off since they disappeared.

Police said they had collected the call data of all the missing students and expressed the hope that they would be tracked down within the next 24 hours.

The father of Abu Bakr denied that his son had been involved in any crime in the past or investigated by the police. However, the principal said another student, Hamza’s name had been struck off from the school for violating discipline.Dawn.