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Karachi: Nadir Ansari was miserable, wondering what had become of his son and nephew after they disappeared last week after apparently going to school.
Then he received a call from his brother asking him to switch on the television. What he saw left him speechless: Azhar Ansari (17) and Zohaib Ali (11) were describing how they had run away from home, dug under a barbed-wire border fence - and ended up in custody in India.
"It was earth-shaking news for me. I was appalled at what they had done," the elder Ansari said yesterday.
Authorities were trying to obtain the release of the youths, no easy task given that people who have even inadvertently crossed the border from either side have spent years - even decades - in jail.
Arranging phone call
Arif Ahmad Khan, the top security official in Sindh province, said the paramilitary rangers guarding the borders had been asked to approach their Indian counterparts to get the boys released as soon as possible from a police station in Rajasthan. They also were trying to arrange a telephone call with the boys.
Azhar and Zohaibi live in Tando Allahyar, some 250km north of Karachi. They left home on April 7, saying they were going to school.
After their parents realised they were missing, Ansari started checking with relatives and hospitals the next day.
"We registered a report with the police on Sunday, and the next day, my brother called me from Karachi to say the boys were being shown on Geo TV," Ansari said.
Geo TV showed the two boys telling Indian police that they had run away because their parents used to beat them with sticks and forced them to go to school.
"Azhar would skip his studies and I used to upbraid him about the need to at least pass the 10th grade so that he would be in a position to get a respectable job and draw a decent salary," said a devastated Ansari.
It appears that the boys hopped on a train to a border crossing called Zero Point, where the two countries conduct strict customs and immigration checks, then dug through shifting sand dunes to get under the fence.
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