Female athlete goes missing in Lahore

LAHORE: A female athlete from Azad Kashmir, who reportedly came to Lahore to take part in the 43rd National Athletics Championship, which concluded at the Punjab Stadium here on Thursday, has gone missing, well informed sources told on the condition of anonymity.

The father of the athlete visited the chief minister house to get Punjab government’s help.

The chief minister house has referred the case to the director general of the Punjab Sports Board, but no clue of the missing athlete has been found yet.

The sources said the director general had inquired about the athlete from the Athletics Federation of Pakistan secretary general Khalid Mahmood and chief organiser of the annual meet, Salman Butt, who expressed their total ignorance about the arrival of the athlete in Lahore.They further said the father of the athlete had informed the director general that the cellphone of her daughter had been off for last three days.

The father also informed that he had been visiting with her daughter for different events like National Championship, which was held in Islamabad last year, and the National Games, which were organised in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also last year.

He said the athlete represented Sindh in those events. But this time, he had not given permission to his daughter to visit Lahore for the championship but assisted by a coach she reached Lahore without informing him.It may be mentioned here that five years back a female athlete from Faisalabad had been raped by two coaches of a sensitive unit of the Athletics Federation of Pakistan in a hotel and was later strangled to death.

Since the coaches of a sensitive department were involved in the incident, the matter was hushed up.

The father of the missing athlete is still in Lahore but he is getting no satisfactory information about the whereabouts of his daughter.

An official of the Punjab Sports Authority said some notorious coaches were involved in such activities as they used to entice female athletes, especially from poor families, under the pretext of giving them employment.