A crime previously unknown in Karachi is kidnapping young girls for prostitution. The victims are housemaids taken from their place of work, either in the morning when they arrive or the evening when they would be going home. Kidnapping is the usual way females are made into white slaves, that is, a girl or woman is held against her will, and forced into prostitution. The city's Police force is aware of prostitution dens but was virtually unaware about kidnapping of girls, until about a week ago when a pretty girl of 12 was taken from Defence Housing Authority (DHA) Phase IV.
The girl let us call her 'Gori', lives in Allahwala Town and works in two adjacent bungalows in DHA-IV. Her family migrated from Multan to Karachi. They are very poor, the men do odd jobs, the women work as housemaids. Even such a young thing like Gori has to work as the family permanently teeters between subsistence and starvation. This is the story of many migrant labourers who have come to Karachi. They are the victims of several criminal scams, such as the "Dubai chalo" scam and rent or purchase of a hut from land mafia in illegal kuchi-abaadis.
They suffer from guilt since they know they are doing something illegal, so they never approach the Police. This makes them even more vulnerable to exploitation by criminal operators.
Gori had finished work in one bungalow and was going to the next one when she saw a woman lying on the road moaning and groaning. Another woman stood nearby wringing her hands and called for help, when she saw Gori. The little girl approached the distressed woman. "Dear child, please help me to put my sister who is very ill in the taxi". (Which was waiting, the driver allegedly would not help since it is taboo to touch a na-mehram). The girl obliged. But the minute they had moved the moaning woman inside the taxi Gori was chloroformed and taken away. In the evening another girl who accompanied Gori to and from work waited for Gori to turn up. It was three in the afternoon. When she did not arrive the companion thought Gori must have gone home alone and left for her own home. At night when Gori had not turned up the family was worried. They asked the companion, who told them she believed Gori was already at home. All night the family stayed awake. Next morning they trooped off to the bungalows where Gori worked. She was not there. The begum sahabs of both bungalows were shocked that Gori had disappeared. It was they who contacted the Police. Meanwhile, the chowkidar of one bungalow, when he heard about Gori's disappearance, recalled he had last seen her heading toward the distressed woman near a taxi, but just then he was called in for some work and forgot the matter. He said the recognised one woman since she had come one day to ask if the house needed a maid. She said she lived in Punjab Colony, and if he ever needed a maid he could contact her there. But she did not give him an address or cell phone number.
Armed with this faint clue to Gori's whereabouts, the family and the Police marched off to Punjab Colony. The search lasted three days. They scoured every lane, and finally located the apartment in which Gori was held captive. There were three more girls in the room, huddled together in a corner, their faces expressing terror. Gori lay in another corner; her mouth was covered with plaster, her hands and feet tied. An old woman was there who said she was just a servant who was told to take care of the girls. She was taken into custody; Gori was taken home by her family, and the Police took the other three girls, probably to darulaman. No further information is available, but almost certainly the matter is being investigated.
Who is to be blamed for this unhappy incident? Is it poor families who force their children to work? Is it begum sahabs who employ child servants? Or the city which appears to upcountry poor to be paved with gold, where jobs are easy to find and the pay is good? It is all these factors which the kidnappers skilfully exploited.
The female kidnappers had already 'cased the joint' on the pretext of asking the chowkidar if the house needed a servant. The tableau of the sick woman on the road was staged to coincide with the time Gori would appear. They made the mistake of telling the chowkidar they lived in Punjab Colony, but perhaps they did not expect to be found; they probably knew of the helplessness of migrant labourers and the mistrust of the Police. Neither did they realise the begums of the two bungalows where Gori worked would contact the Police nor would they be hunted. What is Gori's sate of mind now? Will she still be sent to work? Do they realise she is traumatised? There are too many unanswerable questions. Nevertheless, it is depressing to note another crime has been added to the long list of organised criminal activities in this beleaguered city.