A 49-year-old Muslim cleric, Mohammad Akram, has been arrested for kidnapping  a 7-year-old girl in Hole Narsipura, Hassan district, Karnataka.

Apparently, this news has appeared only in a Tamil news site dailythanthi.com.

Holenarsipura, Karnataka.
7 y/o girl kidnapped by a RoP preacherhttps://t.co/2VHXg5i7kv#Tamil

— URFD00m (@by2kaafi) December 12, 2016

The 7-year-old girl studied in a madrassa adjacent to a mosque in Hole Narsipura. On 9 Dec, the Muslim cleric kidnapped her & kept her in a house in Shivamogga. When the girl did not return from the madrassa, her frantic parents searched everywhere before lodging a complaint with police.

The police has now arrested Mohammed Akram and the rescued girl has been handed over to her parents.

The same news has appeared in a Kannada news site as well.

Minor children are at grave risk in madrassas – with many reports of children being abused or trafficked by their ustads/clerics.

• In May 2014, 589 children from Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal were detained at Palakkad railway junction in Kerala and eight persons arrested on charges of child trafficking for taking the children, aged 3-13, to two Muslim orphanages in Kozhikode and Malappuram. The police suspect a well-organised racket regularly supplies destitute children from impoverished regions of north and north-east to Kerala orphanages so that donations from gulf countries keep flowing.
• In Oct 2016, head moulvi Abdul Gafoor and a Rohingya Muslim refugee couple living in Jammu were arrested for allegedly putting chains on the feet of their 11-year-old son to prevent him from running away from a madrasa.
• Malayalam film director, Ali Akbar, said he was sexually exploited by an ustad (teacher) during his time in madrasa. Akbar alleged that the ustad sexually exploited every student in his class, “Sexual exploitation of children in madrasas is still going on. But, nobody is ready to speak out against it out of fear.”
•  A Kerala woman journalist, VP Rajeena, was threatened on Facebook after she wrote about child sexual abuse in a Madarassa she used to go as a child.
• A 2010 expose showed how many madrassas have become transit shelters for child trafficking, or worse, doubling up as sweatshops themselves.

Worryingly, rather than invest in modern educational institutions, more and more such Islamic madrassas are mushrooming across Bharat – with some even identifying themselves with the hardline Salafi/Wahabbi sect of Islam that is followed by dreaded terror organizations like Islamic State.

(We thank @by2kaafi for alerting us about this news which appeared in Tamil site dailythanti.com.)

Update: 

19 Dec 2016: Added a Kannada report for the same news, along with the photo of the accused Muslim cleric.

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