Girl students in Pak exchange cops for madrassa teachers

ISLAMABAD: Bowing to the whims of militant girl students of a local madrassa here, who had in a Taliban-like operation held two policemen and three women hostage, Pakistan authorities have released two detained teachers of the seminary in exchange for the security personnel.

The veiled students, however, refused to release the women, whom they accuse of running a brothel. The girls, aided and abetted by the pro-Taliban Lal Masjid management and boys from a religious school, turned out to be a handful for the Pakistan government and the police as they caught the policemen and their vehicles and roughed them up in full view of TV cameras on Wednesday.

Appearing helpless in the face of the open challenge mounted by the bamboo stick wielding girls numbering over a thousand, police officials held day-long talks with Ghazi Abdul Rashid, the radical deputy Imam of the mosque after which they managed to secure the release of the two police drivers and their vehicles.

Soon after “capturing” the policemen, the militant activists had removed wireless sets from their vehicles and began monitoring the police communications. The policemen and the teachers of the madrassa were set free simultaneously late Wednesday night in full media glare after Rashid appeared in several TV channels threatening to step up the campaign to enforce Islamisation of the capital.