Smash hit

The children were fed once a day on chapatis and dhal, but never enough. Akash slept huddled against the others on the floor and woke each morning a little more resigned to his fate.

“We just sat around the walls thinking,” Akash said. “We were remembering our homes and our mothers and fathers and hoping someone would rescue us. But nobody came.”

I first saw Akash in a photograph among those of 20 boys who were being touted for sale in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan on the Afghanistan border renowned as a smugglers’ paradise and home to fugitives of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. He was just another black market commodity along with guns, grenades and hashish.

Unbeknown to Akash, a Pakistani Christian missionary and an American evangelist who runs a tiny charity called Help Pakistani Children had seen the boys’ photographs and taken up their cause. Neither man is willing to be identified today for fear of the consequences.

An elaborate sting was conceived. The Pakistani missionary would pose as a Lahore businessman named Amir seeking boys to use as beggars who would give their cash to him.

The two men would also collect evidence that could be used in any police action against the kidnappers. “We knew if we just purchased the boys, the slavers would just restock. We would be fuelling the slave trade,” said the American evangelist, who asked to be referred to as “Brother David”.

They had no idea how hazardous their enterprise was until Amir used some black market contacts to engineer a meeting with Khan and discovered his links to the JUD. “We realised we were out of our depth,” Brother David said ruefully. But they persevered — and prayed a good deal.

Amir played his part well. Within a week he had bought three of the boys for $5,000 (£2,650) and put down a $2,500 deposit on the 17 others, including Akash.

The first three were handed over on a Quetta street in April and returned to their families. But Khan wanted $28,500 for the lot. He gave Amir two months to come up with the money, saying he did not mind if the deadline was missed: he could earn more if he sold them for their organs, he claimed.

Brother David went home to America to raise funds. Amir travelled again and again to Quetta, taking Khan to lunch as his bodyguards lounged outside in pickup trucks, their Kalashnikovs at the ready. He enlisted police officers who insisted that the eventual transaction be recorded with a secret camera so that the evidence against Khan would be irrefutable.

Twelve days ago Amir received a call from Khan summoning him to a meeting at a crossroads on a dirt road near the JUD’s Muridke camp.

There was no cover here, just newly harvested wheatfields and water buffalo wallowing in a pond. Six policemen dressed as labourers with the intention of alerting colleagues in cars concealed a mile away to arrest Khan once the cash had been exchanged for the children.

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