Taliban police in Herat say they have arrested five children and a man for stealing mobile phones in two separate cases on Sunday.
Mahmoud Shah Rasouli, the spokesman of the Taliban police, says that, in the first incident, a 12-year-old child was arrested from the Police District 2 of Herat city with four mobile phones.
According to Mr. Rasouli, this child was arrested after stealing the mobile phones from a downtown store.
Also, the Taliban police announced the arrest of four other children on charges of stealing more phones and a man on the charges of buying stolen goods in the Police District 9 of Herat city.
The statement adds that these children were “professional thieves” of mobile phones.
The Taliban police spokesman says that the criminal file of these children will be handed over to their court for further investigation.
A well-informed source, who spoke to Zan Times on condition of anonymity, says that these children are from Badghis and Farah provinces and that they steal due to extreme poverty.
Since the Taliban regained power, Afghanistan has been engulfed by a humanitarian crisis. The United Nations estimates nearly 20 million people are suffering from hunger in the country.
“The extremely dire economic situation in Afghanistan is pushing more families deeper into poverty and forcing them to make desperate choices, such as putting children to work and marrying girls off at a young age,” said UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore in an official statement last November.
