Rape attempt at Punjab University hostel

Tribune

LAHORE: A rape attempt was reported by a female student at Punjab University Girls Hostel on Thursday night. The man involved escaped after the girl raised a ruckus, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The girl, an MPhil Behavourial Sciences student, said a man entered her room at around 3 am and tried to rape her.

When she cried out, she said, the man raced way. Other students soon made their way to her room. At around 4 am assistant superintendent Qudsia arrived at the hostel and tried to pacify the students.

The students, however, would not calm down and at around 5 am hostel warden Farah and close to 6 in the morning Hall Council chairman Ather Amin arrived at the scene.

A student who resides at the hostel spoke with the The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity and said that a man entered the hostel around 3 am. She said that he went to the first floor and started checking for open doors.

He entered a room but upon finding two women there who woke up, changed his mind and stepped out. She said he then went to the right wing of the hostel and entered a room where a student was fast asleep.

She said once the sleeping woman woke up she cried out for help. She said that she also tried to switch on the lights while the man attempted to pin her down.

The woman kept shouting and after about five minutes the intruder fled.

Another student said that the girls in the room the man had initially tried to enter had a vague sense of a man peeping in. She said that the man seemed to know his way around the hostel.

Amin while speaking with The Express Tribune said that the student had most likely had a nightmare. He said even so the matter was being investigated. He claimed that the guards on duty saw no one enter or exit.

One of the students insisted that two of the guards at the entrance were missing from duty that night.

9-year-old gang raped and murdered

Police officials have arrested three men on suspicion
for the assault.

Tribune

MULTAN: A post mortem report of a 9-year-old girl revealed that she had been gang raped and murdered.

Three people have been identified in the medical report and doctors at Nishtar Hospital said that the child had been hand cuffed and cut with a knife before she was raped several times.

“The medical report confirms that the victim died during the assault and at least three different men were involved,” said Nishtar Hospital’s Dr Shahid.

The victim was a resident of Khudaad Colony and the eldest of five children.

Her father told police officials that his daughter was kidnapped on Thursday and that he had registered an FIR with the police. “On Saturday evening I found her body in a garbage dump outside my house,”  he said.

“A group of children found the body and my son and other daughter recognised who it was,” he said, adding that his children told him about the body.

The girl’s body was handed over to Nishtar Hospital in Multan. Medical officials conducted a post mortem and handed the body over to the police. Cantt Police Station superintendent of police (SP) Mehmoodul Hassan assured that stern action would be taken against the criminals involved in the case. “The medical report confirms that at least three men were involved and we have begun questioning neighbours about any suspicious activity in the area,” he said.

Police officials have apprehended three suspects in this regard.

The mens’ DNA and blood samples have been sent to a lab for testing. Residents of the area have protested against the incident and said that the men responsible should be ‘hanged in public’.

“The criminals will be punished according to the law,” the SP said, adding “but there is immense public pressure on us to catch them and hand them over to the public.”

Police have lodged FIR No 24/2011 in the Cantt Police Station under Section-302 by the father of the victim. The victim had two brothers and two sisters and her mother is currently in the hospital.

“My wife had a heart attack when she found out. She is still in the hospital and the doctors don’t know if she will survive,” the victim’s father said.

Police officials have said that they are presently waiting for the DNA results of the suspects to proceed with their investigation. “We have three suspects in custody and are waiting on the evidence,” the SP said.

Update: January 17, 2011

The Express Tribune Lahore desk has clarified that the names of the victims had been changed to protect their identity in the original print edition. The error was an omission of the notification stating this.

Gang rape: Girl mysteriously disappears

GEO


KARACHI: The girl who had been allegedly molested by a gang in Karachi’s posh area four days back has mysteriously disappeared along with the plaintiff in the case.

Meanwhile, no progress has so far been made in connection with the arrest of the culprits even after a lapse of four days since the kidnapping and alleged gang rape of a girl in Clifton area.

Although the culprits had been identified, no action has so far been taken towards making any arrests.

In the latest development now, the alleged victim of gang rape and the plaintiff have mysteriously vanished, source said.

It has been reported that the girl had to go through police interrogation and investigation at Darkhsan Police Station after media carried reports of the incident. This had left the girl extremely terrified and, as such, she later chose not to have the case registered. Therefore, consequently, the police had to use her friend named Mutahir to come forward as plaintiff and had him get the case lodged.

The police have so far taken into custody four persons after conducting a raid at the place where the girl had attended the birthday party. But nothing more could be done.

The alleged culprits had also made calls on the cell phone of the victimized girl and issued threats. After this, the girl, her girl companion and the plaintiff friend Mutahir had not been in contact with the police.

According to police, they have been trying in vain to contact them on cell phones which constantly remained switched off while their residence in Defence Phase-II was found completely locked.

DHA gang rape: Police arrest 4 suspects

The victims (faces hidden) exiting the Darakhshan police station on Monday. PHOTO

Tribune

KARACHI: Police officials have alerted security personnel deployed at the entry and exit points of the city to arrest those individuals who allegedly raped a girl.

Talking to Express News, DIG South Iqbal Mehmood said that the personnel have been provided with pictures of the accused. Police have also reportedly arrested four people who were involved in the crime. Investigation officer Ishaq Lashari says that the victim has identified one of those arrested as one of the attackers.

Updated from the print edition below.

DHA gang rape: Police question victim’s friend and party’s organiser

The Darakhshan police have started questioning a man identified as Lal Chand who allegedly organised a party that was attended by a young woman allegedly gang raped in DHA Sunday night.

The police are also questioning M, a friend of the victim K, who registered the FIR on Monday.

Clifton SP Tariq Dharejo told The Express Tribune that they made some headway with the help of the car’s tracker system and mobile phone call records. “I want to make it clear that there is no political gang behind the incident,” he said on Tuesday. “We also questioned the watchman of the apartment where Lal Chand resides and held the party and we are close to concluding the case.” He stressed that the police had not detained M, but were only questioning him.

Sources said that the police had acquired the phone numbers and vehicle registration number of the three to four men who rammed their car into the one being driven by K, who was accompanied by a friend S. The women’s car dived into a ditch, they were dragged from it, K was gang raped and they were later dumped in the area.

Dharejo said that they were working with information provided by the victim. They are investigating whether some fight took place at the party, prompting the attackers to follow the women after they left.

Sources in the police also said that there was intense political pressure on the case. According to a source, M gave the names of two men to the police — Vicky and Hashim — as the alleged perpetrators. Vicky, reportedly, has a number of powerful political backers and it is believed that the police are under pressure to remove his name from the investigation.

Police bias

However, the case has been embellished further. Overnight, new ‘details’ were added to the story by police officers. SHO Rana Amjad told The Express Tribune, “These girls were drunk. They said they stopped at [a restaurant] on their way back from the party, but we checked the CCTV footage of [the restaurant] and didn’t see them.”

The police also complained that the media circus that descended on the Darakhshan police station deterred them from doing their job. “It is a competition to see who can break the news first,” one officer remarked. “I told the media that they shouldn’t look for a Mukhtaran Mai in every rape case,” he said, referring to the prominent gang-rape survivor, educationist and human rights activist. “Yeh larkiyan Mukhtaran Mai nahi hain, yeh doosri maiyan hain!” [These women are no Mukhtaran Mai, they are just other mais.] Mai is an Urdu word that refers to a woman and can be used as both a derogatory or an honorific suffix.

Police officers have attempted to portray the women as call girls and cast serious doubts on their statements, despite the initial medico-legal report that verified that K had been raped and the fact that S’s injuries were severe enough to warrant 17 stitches.  The general assumption is that if the woman had a “bad character” it was acceptable to rape her.

Amjad said, “S and K were ‘known’ to the police in the area. There may be some complaints against S already; we are looking into the files. I think she is a dancer. We did not have any time to do this on Monday because we spent all day dealing with the media.” However, Chaudhry Amanat, an investigative officer at the Darakhshan police station, said, “This was just a doubt. No such case against S exists and the police don’t know either of the women.”

While the rape victim K and her friend S wanted to withdraw the complaint, Investigating Officer Ishaq Lashari said, “A complaint is not like ghar ka sauda [groceries] which you can return so easily. We will investigate this case and release details as we get them.”

Lashari told The Express Tribune that the police had met with the K’s friend, M, and had also spoken to K. K told the police that she was not staying at her residence any more but was with some loved ones [azeez] and would visit the police station on Tuesday to record her statement. However, one investigative police officer said that K – who said that she had been treated unfairly – had not come in to record a statement yet. The officer said that if this continued then the FIR would eventually be termed a Class-C FIR.

Not a white Corolla

Amjad said the car used by the perpetrators was a silver Corolla. Initial media reports had suggested that the car was a white Corolla, leading to speculation about the re-emergence of the ‘white Corolla gang’ which had been involved in the abduction and rape of women in Karachi. Amjad said the car may have been a rental.

Amjad denied there was any organised group involved in such cases, or that similar incidents had been reported in the vicinity.

He said a large number of people are at Seaview till the early hours of the morning and the police have received reports of “drunken men chasing women”. “We do have a police check post at Seaview and we monitor the situation. However in cases of women being chased or harassed, there are few complaints filed – otherwise we would have a mountain of FIRs.”

Legal angle

Human rights lawyer Zia Awan and other people have been following the case. “The way that this case has been portrayed by the police and the media reporting has not been conducive,” Awan said. “The women were portrayed to be of a ‘bad character’ – even if they are [sex workers] no one can [rape] them. It doesn’t matter what they were wearing or what time [they were out].” The portrayal has spread fear among parents who are worried about their daughters going out. It was very brave of these women to have come forward. People do come forward now because of the civil society and the positive role that the media has. “But our society is so offensive, there is such a huge stigma and discrimination that most cases are withdrawn or languish in courts for years,” he added. “The focus is always on the victims and never on the perpetrators — who always go scot free.”