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Three schoolchildren from Juhapura weaved an abduction story to escape punishment for being late to school. The recent kidnapping attempts reported from the area added wings to their imagination as they narrated the story to school authorities, quite convincingly.
As the ‘news’ spread, worried parents turned up at schools across Juhapura to collect their wards. It was only after the Vejalpur police grilled the children that there lies were exposed.
On Monday, Azharuddin Sheikh, 12, Sahil Sheikh, 12, and Samir Khan Pathan, 8 —
students of Farooq-E-Azam School near Khadim Society — decided to bunk classes and have some fun at a gaming parlour for a change.
Around 11.30 am, Azharuddin and Sahil went to Samir’s house to collect him as they all go to school together. However, instead of going to the school, they headed to a gaming parlour at Afzal Towers in Juhapura to play snakes and ladders. They also parked Samir’s cycle at a spot midway.
The trio decided to spend the snack money their parents had given them on games. Unfortunately for them, Samir’s uncle Mohsin happened to see the three kids and confronted them.
Scared he may report the matter to their parents, the kids ran away from there. They reached school around 1.30 pm. On being asked why they were late, they told the authorities that two burqa-clad women had tried to abduct them. It was a story they had cooked up on their way to school.
Samir allegedly told the school officials, “We threw stones at the women. One of them hit the woman and she began bleeding profusely from the head. Meanwhile a man appeared and took away the two women in an autorickshaw.”
The school reported the matter to Vejalpur police which asked the parents of the three children to get them to the police station so that their statements could be recorded.
While the kids repeated up the same story again, saying the abduction attempt took place near Afzal Towers, it did not sound convincing to the cops. They took the children to the spot and asked them to explain the incident again. But there was a lot of disparities between the statements given at the police station and at
the spot.
When asked what were they doing at the spot that does not fall on the route to their school, the kids fumbled.
Also, nobody near Afzal Towers had witnessed any abduction attempt. Later, Samir’s uncle also told the cops that he had seen the children at the gaming parlour during school hours.
That left the trio exposed. They later confessed to have cooked up a story to come up with a believable excuse for being absent from school.
“No abduction attempt has taken place. The kids had lied to us. They are known to be mischievous,” said Mohammad Ibrahim Sheikh, school trustee.
“One of them was unapologetic when we warned them against telling lies. He told us he was not scared of police and that he wanted to be like Salman Khan from Dabanng when he grows up,” said a cop.
Samina Pathan, whose son studies in class 7 in a Juhapura school, said, “I heard rumours that a gang had kidnapped an eight-year-old boy and that two other children managed to escape. Worried, I decided to pick up my son from school. Later, we learnt that some boys of Farooq-E-Azam school had cooked up a story to escape scolding from teachers.”
Inspector H B Dave of Vejalpur police station told Mirror, “The lies the children had cooked up were exposed when we took them on a spot visit.” |
