Pakistani Boys were smuggled in by couple posing as parents |
Young brothers rescued DUBAI – Two brothers, aged six and four years, who were smuggled into the UAE from a remote Pakistani village, have been rescued, but the couple who brought them posing as their parents are reportedly at large.The boys’ father, Ghulam Rasool, who works as a gardener in Dubai, had no idea that his children, Shajar Abbas, 6, and Sajawal, 4, had been living a pathetic life in a camp near Al Ain’s Coco-Cola Round about for the past three months. Sajawal is now bed-ridden after suffering serious injuries to both his legs after falling from a camel’s back. He became hysterical when police raided the place where they were staying. Ansar Burney, a Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist, helped the police trace the two children last Tuesday after hectic efforts over the past three weeks. It is learnt that the police have taken into custody for questioning a Pakistani expatriate, Nazir, who allegedly played the key role in smuggling the two boys and five other children for training them to ride camels. “It is unfortunate that some Pakistanis are involved in this heinous crime.” Mr Burney said. He said UAE police had been extending full cooperation in rescuing children who had fallen prey to this “organized crime”. “We are able to rescue children only in those cases where we are able to find the missing links and have concrete information about their presence. “We don’t want to reveal details of the functioning of this organized crime as it will affect the investigations,” said Mr Burney, who had previously rescued other Pakistani children so smuggled, the last being a nine-year-old boy Mohammed Zubair, who was languishing in an Abu Dhabi Police station a few weeks ago. He said it was sad that young children were still being brought into the Gulf States from various countries by unscrupulous elements despite a Presidential Order (No 4/2/1652) issued in October 1984 banning use of children less than 10 years of age and weighing less than 28kg for camel racing. Mr Burney said the two boys are likely to be repatriated in a week’s time after completion of necessary formalities. Talking to Khaleej Times yesterday before leaving Dubai for Karachi, Mr Burney said the boys were taken from their illiterate grandmother by a person residing near their home in Basti Qaimwala in Dera Ghazi Khan village of Punjab province on the pretext of making passports to send them to their father who had not been in touch with the family for a long time. The children were in the custody of their grandmother after the death of their mother nearly a year ago. When the boys did not return and the person who took them remained untraceable, a complaint about the missing children was lodged with the police and the Missing persons Bureau run by the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International. Initially, the efforts to trace them were concentrated in Pakistan. Following a tip-off that the boys were camping somewhere in the UAE, Mr Burney started the search for them, with the help of local community leaders Mohammed Azeem, Ashraf Siddiqui, Abdul Sattar Pardesi, Karim Khan and Taher Tufail, and Noorullah Khan, Minister at the Pakistan Embassy in Abu Dhabi. An appeal for intervention and help was made to the office of the under-secretary at the Ministry of Interior in the last week of October and that eventually led to the police raids. He said two Pakistani nationals, Gul Ahmed Khan alias Shajju and Shahroo Mai, who posed as parents of the boys, left them at a camp for camel riders in Al Ain. The two boys were threatened with dire consequences by the couple unless they remained silent. “I cannot reveal more details as it will affect the investigations here and also in Pakistan,” Mr Burney said, adding that the boys were first taken to Iran and then brought here. He said the immigration and other authorities in the UAE and Pakistan were forced to believe that the two boys were the children of the couple as the passport of the woman had a photograph with the two boys sitting in her lap. The couple had also allegedly made fake identification cards and birth certificates for the children, which showed them as their children. “The person to whom the custody of these children was given for a huge sum believed the couple’s version” that the boys were their children. Said Mr Burney. It is believed that the couple has left the Country. Press Back on your browser to Return
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