October 31, 2024
By Umar Bacha
HARIPUR
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is not an uncommon crime, but in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a slew of recently reported incidents are raising serious concerns for the safety and well being of children in the province.
In Hazara’s Haripur district, police managed to nab a Quran teacher for raping two minor siblings multiple times. Other similar incidents have also been reported from within the jurisdictions of the City, Saddar and Khanpur police stations.
“Khanpur police station received a complaint from a man whose 11-year-old son was gang-raped by four men in the local mosque’s washroom area,” Khursheed Azhar, an advocate of the Peshawar High Court told Voicepk of one of these recently reported cases. “These crimes put sexual abuse survivors and their parents in a tough place, especially when they have to go to hospitals, police stations, and courts, and apart from all this still have to face society.”
Investigating Officers (IO) of Saddar and City police stations told Voicepk that every month three to four FIRs pertaining to rape are registered in nearly every police station in Haripur district. According to official records, Saddar police station registered three rape cases in 2023 and eight in 2024, while at the City police station, eight cases were registered in 2023 and 16 in 2024. These numbers show how the crime has doubled.
Asad Saeed Khan, President of the District Bar Association Haripur, pointed out that speedy trials and proper investigations can ensure justice in many CSA cases. But not only do trials take months and even years to conclude, poor investigations due to lack of training of police officers, poor funds, and mishandling of evidence are why many of these cases do not lead to any convictions.
“Under the Anti-Rape Act 2021, special courts were meant to be set up to conclude rape trials within four months, and these are meant to be in-camera trials. But the law is not being implemented,” he said. “We have no anti-rape cells, and trials are certainly not being concluded within four months.”
“In Khanpur alone, there were seven to eight incidents of child sexual abuse,” said Advocate Azhar. “This is a terrifying development and a cause for concern for us, for our children, and for society at large.
Cruel Numbers
According to Sahil’s 2023 Cruel Numbers report, 4,253 minors, of which 2251 were girls and 1,962 were boys, were subjected to violence in Pakistan. CSA constituted 48% of the total reported instances of abuse, out of which 1,064 of the victims were boys while 957 were girls. For all CSA cases, acquaintances were the highest reported category of abusers at 954 separate incidents. Religious teachers were the offenders in 42 CSA cases.
Of the total number of reported cases of child abuse, 124 incidents (3%) were recorded in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“Often times children who are sex abuse survivors do not alert their parents, and likewise, parents also do not report to the police in fear of becoming social outcasts,” Khan elaborated. “Even when people do report the crime, then it’s a question of whether our courts, our investigators and our administration are performing as needed. Are speedy trials being held? Are the accused being punished? Until and unless we create a deterrent, these crimes will not diminish.”
In both cases received this month, the Saddar Police have arrested the accused, while the City Police are carrying out raids to apprehend suspects in cases that have been registered with them.