As you all may have heard about 3 days back Pakistan was abuzz with the abduction of a 14 yr old girl Madinah Anwar, well as the story played out it turns out that it might have been a con job by the father. Details can be read in the Express Tribune Article “Conman Shamsul Anwar Busted“.
The story of his daughter’s abduction was not newly minted, as Anwar has been portraying himself as a victim of terrorism since 2010. However, when his daughter Madina Anwar eloped to Swabi to marry her ex-fiancé, Anwar decided to take advantage of the situation. But for this purpose, he needed to gain people’s sympathies, for which he needed a story to hit the nail at the right place. Therefore he decided to present himself as a hero before the media, a hero who was being victimised for saving people’s lives. So he claimed his daughter had been kidnapped by the same terrorists who had earlier kidnapped his two sons and slaughtered one of them
In defense of the Social Media that rallied for this cause, I believe we relied upon the authenticity of The News seasoned Crime Investigative Reporter Shakeel Anjum who researched the story [It was also interesting to note that Shamsul Anwar did also convince Express Tribune reporter Sehrish Wasif of a similar story in Dec 2010 [without the Madinah Anwar kidnapping reference]