Police in the Pakistani city of Karachi have rescued 54 students from the basement of an Islamic seimnary, or madrassa, where they said they were kept in chains by clerics, beaten and barely fed. Police raided the Zakariya madrassa late on Monday on the outskirts of Karachi. They were now investigating whether it had any links to violent groups, which often recruit from religious schools. Most victims had signs of severe torture, and had developed wounds from the chains, police said. The main cleric of the madrassa escaped during the raid. Many of the students who varied in age from 15 to 45 and were kept 30 to a room were still in chains while shown on television. Senior police official Rao Anwar said many of those rescued were drug addicts brought to the seminary for treatment. “These people were not taken to madrassa forcefully. In fact, parents of of them had themselves got their children admitted,” he said.
