April 20, 2024
Bilal Baseer
ISLAMABAD:
Police claim to have recovered a missing Kashmiri woman from Toba Tek Singh, Punjab 16 years after her alleged abduction from Islamabad.
According to the FIR filed at the Shahzad Town police station under section 365-B of the Pakistan Penal Code, Naseem Akhtar, the mother of Aasia Bashir, reported on October 18, 2008 that her daughter was missing.
In another application submitted on March 27, 2009, Akhtar requested the registration of an FIR against the accused persons she had named.
Aasia Bashir hailed from the Chakothi area in Azad Kashmir. She was abducted from Ban Faqiran village near Margalla Town in Islamabad, where she and her family had settled in a camp set up for earthquake affectees. They had settled there following their migration caused by the 2005 earthquake, which occurred 16 years ago.
Aasia told the police that she was abducted by a person named Ghulam Mustafa, who took her to Toba Tek Singh in Punjab, where he kept her in his house for two years.
Later, Aasia was sold to an elderly man named Allah Yar, a resident of Toba Tek Singh. She stayed with him under a marriage contract until a video of her narrating her ordeal went viral.
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Aasia further stated that upon learning that someone from her area had married a girl from Muzaffarabad and relocated to Toba Tek Singh, she reached out to them for assistance. She added, with their help, she uploaded a video message on social media which led the police to trace her and facilitate her recovery.
After completion of legal proceedings, the police brought the abductee to Islamabad and recorded her statement in the court of a judicial magistrate of competent jurisdiction.
As per the International Committee of the Red Cross, a total of 576 people were registered as missing after the earthquake but authorities failed to maintain proper records to trace the whereabouts of patients and ascertain the survival or demise of victims in the aftermath of the disaster.
The authorities managed to trace approximately 350 individuals by 2018, yet 228 people remain missing.