Staff Reporter
Officials of the Sindh government and police “raided” the Sirat-ul-Jannah orphanage in Clifton area, according to the head of the orphanage. Mrs Ghufran Qureshi, Sirat-ul-Jannah’s head, said that at least 20 people barged into the building without showing any documents. “The kids are frightened and shaken up,” she said, adding that officials told her son that they were from the government’s Darul Atfal department. A police officer at the Clifton police station said that the area police weren’t part of the raid. He said the “inspection” was conducted by officials of a government department and they were escorted by the court police. The police officer said he was unaware why the orphanage was inspected but he believed that it could be connected to the last week’s raid on an Edhi shelter home in Clifton. The scribe tried to contact officials of the Sindh Social Welfare Department but didn’t get a response. Officials of the Sindh Social Welfare Department along with a judicial magistrate had raided the Edhi shelter home on January 24, after a girl allegedly died of torture there. A woman in her complaint filed in the Clifton police station on January 23 had said that a girl was tortured to death by a teacher at the shelter home. The SSWD had taken seven girls into protective custody in the raid. The statements of around 150 girls were recorded in the presence of the judicial magistrate and seven of them complained that they were tortured. Faisal Edhi, who heads the Edhi Foundation, termed the case against his shelter home “baseless”. He said the deceased girl had been ailing. It was a natural death which was why it wasn’t reported to the police, he said. Faisalihad said the complainant had been living in the shelter home since her childhood. He claimed that her brother wanted to take her home with him and that was the reason why all these stories were being made up.
