Boy kidnapped by aunt for ransom recovered.

TOBA TEK SINGH -- Razabad police (Faisalabad) on Monday recovered a child two-and-a-half hours after his kidnapping.

Police said Muhammad Talha (12) was lured by her aunt (his mother's sister) Shabana Bibi and her husband Muhammad Arshad when he came out of his school and took him away to their house in Diglaspura locality. They telephoned Talha's mother and demanded Rs3.5 million ransom, threatening that if not paid the boy will be killed. Police traced the location of the caller and recovered Talha.

Police have registered a case and arrested the couple.

seminar: The Hometown Community Foundation (HCF) has embarked upon an ambitious project to involve all the stakeholders to observe the World Anti-Narcotics Day on June 26 in a befitting manner.

Addressing a seminar in Faisalabad on Monday, Dr Maqsood Ahmad of the HCF expressed concerns at continuous increase in use of narcotics and proportionate hike in the number of deaths particularly during the Covid-19 when unemployment pushed more than 20m individuals below the poverty line.

Dr Ahmad said geographically Pakistan was situated in a region where opium, morphine, marijuana, hemp and other sedatives were freely available to the potential consumers of the narcotics.

Quoting data of the UN office on Drugs and Crime, he said Pakistan had 6.7m drug users and we must pool our energies to bring the number down to the minimum level. He said the government agencies, academic institutions and community leaders were making solo flights to curb this menace, which was the main cause of their failure to rein in this problem.

Mr Ahmad said the HCF had launched a project to join the psycho-socioeconomic...