Author: AFP
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 13, 2011
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Pakistan-police-rescue%20%20-45-students-chained-in-madrassa/articleshow/11094694.cms
Pakistani police rescued 45 students found
chained in the basement during a raid late Monday on a madrassa in the southern
port city of Karachi, police said.
Officers also arrested two clerics at the
Madrassa Zakarya in Karachi's central Sohrab Goth area but the head of the
seminary managed to escape, police official Mukhtiar Khaskheli told AFP.
"At least 18 of those chained are aged
20 or younger, while the rest are older," Khaskheli said. Some Islamic
schools in Pakistan are accused of training militants and supporting violent
extremist groups, with some dispatching fighters to neighbouring Afghanistan.
"The madrassa officials claim that they
had chained those students because they were drug addicts and they wanted
to rehabilitate them and make them better Muslims," the police official
said. Khaskheli said a full scale investigation had been started which would
also inquire about any possible links with militants.
"Every possibility including its involvement
in militancy will be investigated upon," said Sharfuddin Memon, a spokesman
for the home department of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.
Memon said the incident highlighted the brutality in society.
"It showed the brutalised aspect of
our society and our police's effort was aimed at eradicating that element,"
he said.
Local private Samaa TV showed footage of
the madrassa and the chained students, who danced in jubilation as police
started to release them.
According to government records, there are
at least 15,148 seminaries in Pakistan with more than two million students
-- around five per cent of the 34 million children in formal education.
But officials suspect thousands more go unregistered,
providing sons of Pakistan's poverty-stricken majority the only education
they can afford.
