Punjab has come in the news again, and for all the wrong reasons. It was only last year that the Kasur incident shook the nation with the biggest child sexual abuse scandal reported in Pakistan. Over 200 children were violated, raped, filmed and their innocence was stolen from them. This time things are looking even more grim and the worst culprits are not the government, it’s the people.
Little obvious action has been taken since and according to the latest statistics, it seems that pedophiles have claimed Punjab as their own.
This year’s first half reports numbers as high as 652 cases of child abduction in Punjab, 312 in Lahore alone.
Other striking numbers were seen in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Multan. Okara, on the other hand, had zero reported cases. This could either be attributed to an accelerated police activity or an alarming oversight in reporting.
A country that can’t protect its children from pedophiles ought to have a hard time looking itself in the mirror. With this year’s abysmal statistics, a question for political figureheads and Chief Minister of Punjab remains: Can you sleep at night knowing you have done nothing at all, not ever said anything to anyone about how horrible all of this is?