The Pakistan Police on Sunday arrested a cleric of a madrassa for allegedly beating to death an eight-year-old boy who had tried to run away from the seminary in Karachi’s Bin Qasim town, Dawn reported.
Mohammed Hussain had tried to flee the seminary in the past as well and had been subjected to corporal punishment for it, Station House Officer (Bin Qasim) Dhani Bux Marri told Dawn. After his last attempt to escape, his parents brought him back to the institution, when the accused, Qari Najmuddin, allegedly used a stick and another blunt object to beat him up.
The boy was then taken to a hospital where the doctors declared him dead.
Since the parents of the boy refused to file a case against the cleric, the police have filed a First Information Report on charges of murder and violence on behalf of the state, The Express Tribune reported. The parents have even refused to give permission to perform autopsy on the boy’s body.
Corporal punishment is a crime in Sindh under a law passed in February 2017, protecting children against smacking, hitting, slapping, pinching and pulling hair, among others, in schools or other educational institutions.
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