September 3rd, 2021
By Ahmed Saeed
LAHORE
A teenage boy has been arrested for raping a four year old girl. The incident happened in the precinct of the Saddar police station, in the Alipur district, Muzaffargarh. The accused is a close relative of the rape survivor.
Police have registered the first information report (FIR) under rape charges on complaint of the rape survivor’s mother. Accordingto details in the FIR, the incident took place on August 24 but the case was not registered until six days later.
The rape survivor had gone to her paternal grandfather’s house which was located at an approximate distance of one acre. When the little girl didn’t return home after several hours, her mother went to her father in law’s house to bring her home. When she reached near her in-laws’ house, she heard the screams of her daughter coming from a room, she rushed to the room where the accused Mehran was raping the little girl. The girl was also bleeding. The accused fled the crime scene at the time but was later arrested.
The survivor’s mother rushed her daughter to the hospital where after preliminary medical examination it was confirmed that she was raped. The mother confronted her father-in-law about the incident who first denied any such occurrence. However, on the mother’s insistence and seeing medical evidence he admitted the incident but pressurized her daughter in law to not to report the matter to the police.
“He was aware of the incident but he didn’t make any attempts to stop it. He then asked me to take one acre of land for not reporting this crime to police but I bluntly refused because I want justice for my daughter and not any monetary benefits”, the survivor mother told voicepk.net.
According to the SHO PS Saddar Muhammad Ilyas, the accused is about 14 or 15 years old and has confessed his crime and told the police that he did so as he was unable to control his desires. A local court has remanded him to police custody to obtain further medical evidence and DNA samples of him.
“My daughter is having sleepless nights”
The survivor’s mother has vowed to go to any length to get justice for her daughter.
“I am still getting threats from the accused’s father and my father-in-law. They want me to withdraw the case and in case of non-compliance, they threatened me with grave consequences. But I will not bow down before any pressure even I have to fight with my own family”, she said.
Talking about her daughter’s condition, she said that the little girl is still suffering from pain and is in great mental trauma. “She is having sleepless nights due to pain and sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and started crying. I couldn’t see this condition of my daughter and want to see the perpetrators of the crime go through the same pain and agony.”
Advocate Hina Jillani who also works on Juvenile Justice among other human rights areas has previously highlighted that 16 per cent of the youth that is in prison is involved in sexual offences. It is the third highest offence under which juveniles are arrested and are in prison.
“Most of the offences as recorded in 2017 were against property (45pc), followed by those against human body such as murder, and lastly (16pc) were involved in sexual offences,” informed Ms Jillani. “In 2018, unfortunately those with sexual offences increased three times (630 children in total) across Punjab.
