Rights Watch | 5 Oct 2023

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Seminary Teacher Arrested for Alleged Assault on Eight-Year-Old Student

A seminary instructor has been apprehended for assaulting a young student in the Liaquatabad Police jurisdiction. Qari Amir is accused of subjecting eight-year-old Abdul Rahman to severe physical abuse using a rubber pipe.

The signs of this brutality were reportedly evident on the student’s body. In response to the victim’s father’s complaint, the police have taken Qari Amir into custody and filed a case against him.

 

Man arrested for allegedly killing two minor nephews in Narowal

A man has been arrested for allegedly killing his two young nephews in Wadhla village, Zafarwal. Javed Akhtar, who is already in jail for a previous murder charge, is the suspect.

Rehana Kausar, Javed’s wife, claims that her father and brother forced her to give false testimony against her husband in court. She says they took her two sons to a festival and later found them dead in the fields. She believes her brother, Muhammad Rafaq, killed them in retaliation for the earlier murder of their brother, Ashfaq.

The Zafarwal police have filed a murder case against Muhammad Ramzan, Rafaq, and an unidentified person based on Rehana’s complaint. Rafaq was arrested while attempting to flee the country, and the police suspect the children were strangled with a rope.

 

PHC Overturns Conviction in Kohistan Honour Killings Case

The Peshawar High Court’s Abbottabad Circuit Bench overturned the conviction of three individuals involved in the Kohistan honour killings case. Justices Kamran Hayat Miankhel and Ijaz Khan made this decision after reviewing petitions challenging the 2019 life imprisonment sentence given by the Kolai-Palas trial court to Umar Khan, Saheere, and Sabeer.

The trial court had acquitted the other accused. In 2012, five Kohistani women were allegedly killed by their family members in response to a viral video showing them clapping at a wedding. The bodies of the women were never recovered as they were reportedly disposed of in local streams and rivers. Afzal Kohistan, who raised awareness about the murders, was assassinated along with his three brothers. Gulnazar and Bin Yaseer, who were involved in the video, have gone into hiding due to a local cleric’s death decree against them.

Following the video’s circulation on social media, then Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry initiated legal action and ordered an investigation into the “heinous crime.” A judicial commission formed by the Supreme Court found that they could not identify the women seen clapping in the video, and those presented to the commission were different individuals.

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