Her name is Feroza and she is seven years old. For the first time, in a long time, she is no longer being beaten with heated tongs and locked up at night in a cold washroom. The Child Protection and Welfare Bureau (CPWB) recovered her from a house near the Kangi-wala bypass in Gujranwala.
Feroza is the same girl whose cries for help I could not ignore in Rawalpindi.
“Baji, open the door, I’m dying in here,” she cried at night.
I wrote her story of abuse and neglect that attracted an overwhelming response from Dawn.com's readers. I wished in my last blog for a helpline for abused kids. Fortunately, in Punjab, there is one.
Simply dial 1121. You might save the life and future of a child. I know we did.
As I browsed through the readers’ comments on Dawn.com, I noticed a brief message from Hasan Rasheed who identified the child rescue helpline.
When the door opened
What followed was a phenomenal response by the Government of Punjab and the police.
In minutes, I was speaking with Ms. Kubra Malik, Rawalpindi’s child protection officer, who assured me that she would obtain and execute a search warrant to rescue Feroza in Rawalpindi.
How was Feroza then recovered in Gujranwala?
On a dead-end street in a neighbourhood near Peshawar Road, Feroza worked as an illegal house cleaner. Neighbours knew of her ordeal. Some had even witnessed her being beaten by the family who employed her. No one came to her rescue.
They thought her name was Rashida and that she was 12 years old. It was not apathy; the neighbours did not know whom to call for help. Regrettably, good Samaritans and victims are more afraid of the police than the culprits are.
I did not know her name or how she looked. All I knew was that a child was crying while being locked up in a washroom in a neighbouring house in Rawalpindi Cantonment. It was the 12th of Rabi-ul-Awwal.
That night, I notified the Westridge police who sent a mobile unit within minutes, but could not enter the house without a search warrant.
Only days later, Ms. Malik and her colleagues, joined by the police, returned with a search warrant.
But Feroza was nowhere to be found.
As we stood in the street wondering what to do, an elderly woman stepped out of her house and told the police that she also had witnessed the abuse and that the family might have hidden the child in a neighbouring house.
More neighbours stepped out in support.
The search was widened to other houses. Still, there was no trace of her.
Ms. Malik and her colleagues quizzed Feroza’s employer and abuser, Aqsa (last name withheld). Aqsa reluctantly disclosed that Feroza has been moved to another family in Gujranwala.
Within minutes, the Gujranwala office of the CPWB was notified. Another search party executed subsequent search warrants and finally rescued her from a house near the Kangi-wala bypass. The police registered an FIR against one Khalid, who is reportedly Aqsa’s father.
The police later learnt that Feroza hails from rural Sindh. She was most likely sold by her legal guardians to serve as a maid.
Feroza told the CPWB of the abuse she had suffered. Aqsa used to beat Feroza with a heated tong and locked her up in a cold washroom. It was that chance encounter with her cries for help, emerging from the neighbour’s washroom that prompted me to act.
Feroza’s story is about both despair and hope
What to say of a society where poverty or greed makes parents sell their children into slavery.
What to say of a place where a mother of a three-year old girl routinely tortures someone else’s seven-year-old daughter.
But at the same time, I see hope. I see the Westridge police responding in minutes to help me in the wee hours to locate Feroza. It was the police’s first visit to Aqsa’s house that spooked the family, after which they relocated her.
Her abuse stopped the night the police knocked at Aqsa’s house. Yet, she was still not safe.
Feroza found shelter from abuse only when Ahmed Cheema, a child protection officer in Gujranwala, and his colleagues rescued her from Khalid Butt’s house and took her in the state’s protection.
Some readers would still argue whether Feroza has really been saved?
How long will she be in the State’s protection?
If returned to her legal guardians, will they sell her again to a different family?
These are important questions, yet they should not dissuade use from admiring the state’s institutions for doing their job well and doing it swiftly. The police was there to help when I called. Ms. Malik’s team responded promptly with the legal cover. Ms. Malik told me that even before my formal complaint reached her, the CPWB’s chairperson, Ms. Saba Sadik, had already alerted the team after reading about Feroza on Dawn.com.
Throughout Punjab, the CPWB is doing amazing work, rescuing helpless children abandoned by their families and the society.
They rescued Ansaar in Lahore who was being beaten by a hot cooking plate. He was sold as a domestic helper for a mere 1,000 rupees.
They also rescued Shahzad from a house where his employer used to scratch his neck with her fingernails. She used hangers to hit him on his head causing head and eye damage.
It is no one else but your friends, family, and neighbours perpetrating this abuse against children. This could be prevented if you are willing to take the first step.
The state has already legislated and created institutions to assist you. The Punjab Destitute and neglected Children Act of 2004 (amended in 2007) equips the state and the society to help abused children. But the state can’t do it alone.
Feroza’s rescue tells us one thing: it requires one to take a stand and call out the persons abusing a helpless child. The police, the child protection bureau, and more importantly, your neighbours, will reach out to you to help.
But you must take the first step.
The CPWB in Punjab is doing outreach in government schools advising children to be aware of child abuse in their homes and communities and report incidences of abuse to the state.
I hope the telecom industry and the electronic media in Pakistan also runs a dedicated campaign to make the citizenry aware of where to seek help to prevent child abuse.
Also, I hope that if they have not already done so, other provinces follow Punjab’s example of creating effective and resourceful child protection bureaus.
That children are like precious gems is a euphemism — Feroza is more than a precious gem.
She, and others like her, are this country’s future. They need to be protected and nurtured to secure a brighter future for this nation.