July 30, 2022
By Rehan Piracha
LAHORE: A local court in Kohat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has sentenced to death a man who sexually abused his 14-year-old daughter for four years.
The incident came to light in December 2020 when the daughter along with her mother filed a case at Kohat Cantonment police station. According to the case, the girl had told the police that her father had been sexually abusing her for four years and using threats to silence her.
The lawsuit further stated that her father ‘threatened her that if she told anyone, he would sell her or kill her’. In the first investigation report, the girl told police that the sexual abuse began when she was just 10 years old while she was left alone with her father as her mother had to visit the doctor and had taken her younger sister along.
According to the case, the girl’s father used to beat her when she refused to have any sexual relations. Later, the daughter narrated the whole story to her mother who lodged a case with police. In January 2021, the accused father was arrested by the police and legal proceedings were initiated against him.
In a judgment pronounced on July 26, Kohat Child Protection Court judge Farhana Tabassum sentenced Sultan Mehmood, who is a resident of Jurand area of Kohat, to death with a fine of Rs 100,000 for the offence of rape of a child under section 376 of Pakistan Penal Code.
The convict would undergo imprisonment of six months in case of non-payment of fine. For the offence of criminal intimidation under Section 506 of the PPC, the judge sentenced him to three years imprisonment with a fine of Rs 10,000 and imprisonment of further one month in case of non-payment of the fine. The court allowed period of detention to be considered in the convict’s sentence of imprisonment under Section 382-B of the Criminal Procedure Code. The death sentence is subject to the confirmation of the capital punishment reference by the Peshawar High Court.
Kohat Police Spokesperson Fazal Naeem said the police followed up the case by collecting all the evidence against the accused. “Police brought the case to its logical conclusion based on the best investigative practices,” he said. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has seen an increase in child abuse cases over the past three years.