Minors assault boy
Rehman Baba police arrested three young boys for assaulting a 12-year-old in Hazakhwani on the outskirts of Peshawar. According to official reports, the assault took place at about 9 pm when the minor victim was on his way home from work at a local tailoring shop in Hazarkhawni, and a group of three boys ambushed him. They allegedly forced the victim to another location, where two of the boys physically assaulted him and the third filmed the incident on a mobile phone. The police are holding the alleged perpetrators and awaiting the victim’s medical report.
50% female quota in university syndicate decried
The Teaching Staff Association of the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) has taken issue with the percentage of women in the university’s syndicate. In a letter to the Punjab Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar, UET-TSA President Dr. Fahim Gohar Awan said that the representation of women in the UET Syndicate was being kept at 50%, which was both unjustified and “contrary to democratic principles”.
Dr. Awan cited The Punjab Fair Representation of Women Act 2014, and said that women’s representation in the syndicates of universities such as the Punjab University Syndicate had been kept at 33% as the act demanded.
“However, in UET Lahore Syndicate”, Dr. Awan continued, “this ratio has been kept at 50%”. In Dr. Awan’s eyes, this number is unfair. Far from signaling a positive and much-needed increase in the representation of women, he considered the current quota a usurping of the rights of deserving male teachers.
Woman murdered by step-brother
A man reportedly shot and killed his step sister, Kausar Bibi, on Wednesday, July 15 in Chak 601 GB area of Bahlak, Faisalabad. Kausar Bibi, a newlywed, had was visiting her parents. There, her stepbrother Adeel, who reportedly believed her sister to be of questionable character confronted her in a vicious argument, after which he allegedly opened fire on her and killed her. The accused is currently at large, having escaped before police arrived at the scene.
Death no bar to religious intolerance
Police and locals allegedly removed Islamic symbols from an Ahmadiyya graveyard in Tirigiri, Gujranwala on July 13. The graveyard was shared between the Ahmadis and the mainstream Muslim community until 1967. Most of the graves belonged to Ahmadis, and after they were legally declared non-Muslims, the rest of the community stopped using the graveyard.
According to the local Ahmadiyya community, some Muslim locals complained to the Rahwali police regarding the Islamic symbols on the graves on July 3. The police pressurized the minority community to permit the removal of the symbols.
A police spokesperson denied the allegation, stating that the community was forbidden from using the symbols under the Constitution of Pakistan. A spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya community spoke of the double standard between the state’s recent insistence that Pakistan supports religious harmony and tolerance and the police’s capitulation to the desires of the extremists to persecute a marginalized community.
He said the Ahmadis residing in Pakistan are not afforded peace even after their demise.
