November 9, 2024
By Amir Bajoi
QUETTA
Recently an incident took place in Quetta’s Hazara Town, where an 8-year-old child was killed with a sharp instrument. Upon investigation by the local police, the child was also raped before being killed. The body was found in a deserted area where it was dumped after an attempt was made to burn it.
According to Muhammad Baloch, the SSP Crime Investigation, the police started their investigation by collecting evidence as soon as they received information. “We have a serial crime unit to look into all such cases and that unit is being supervised by SSP Capt. Zohaib,” he said. “We began picking up suspects based on our CCTV footage, and other clues, and began interrogation.”
A case was registered against the incident under Sections 302 and 377 of the Pakistan Penal Code. The eight-year-old child was the son of a taxi driver.
“We narrowed in to a 15 year old boy who confessed to the crime,” said SSP Muhammad Baloch. “Upon interrogation we realized that the teenager had been steadily going towards this direction since some time. He was socially isolated since some time now, and in his own childhood he himself had been sexually abused. He did not find a place for himself in his own family or in society. WIth the passage of time he began to rely more and more on online activities such as watching TV series and became more dependant upon cell phones to counter social isolation. As his personality started developing, there were other signs that began to show up. The first incident happened when he killed his own dog. He had a backpack of his own where he kept a hammer, and some other tools. He picked this child somehow, and took him to a secluded place, and eventually killed him.”
Child sexual abuse cases are being reported from Balochistan almost daily. According to the police surgeon, at least one case is reported every week, in which young girls are also victims.
Dr. Ayesha Faiz, a police surgeon, says, “Since some time now we have been receiving a lot of cases of child sexual abuse – of both boys and girls,” said Dr Ayesha Faiz, the police surgeon. “They have been very young – seven years, eight years, and even children as young as three years have been brought to us. Whereas there are older children too.”
Most of these rape cases involve children who are so young that they cannot even speak properly, so the accused can lure them and hurt them without any resistance, while getting away with it scot free.
“Recently, a girl was brought to me. She was a resident of Chaman and was around five or six years old. She was bleeding badly,” says Dr Ayesha. “All she told me was when she went out some boy abducted her….she is so young she cannot even identify him, she doesnt even know his name. Many such cases come to us.”
The lack of punishment given to the accused in cases of child sexual abuse is one another reason why the perpetrators feel they have impunity and can carry on with their acts.
According to Advocate Abdul Hakeem Zareen, a legal expert, the main reason for such incidents is that on the one hand, cases reach the court rarely while on the other hand the case evidence is not presented according to the law.”
“If the evidence is presented properly by the prosecution, it is not easy for the accused to escape, as under Sections 377 and 376 of the PPC, the punishment is life imprisonment. The purpose of giving this punishment is to prove to the others that this is what happens after you commit a crime. But in Pakistan, because of the weak prosecution, the accused ends up being acquitted and being given benefit of the doubt.”
Because of tribal traditions in Balochistan, various accused end up being severely punished while others get away with what they have done – the result of which is that cases never even reach the court and the child is impacted with great mental and psychological stress and trauma.
According to Saeed, Social Child Protection Officer, “Balochistan is a tribal region where cases of child abuse are often not registered at the police stations, or with the Levis so such cases are dealt with and ended at the local jirga level, which has a negative mental/psychological impact on the victim,” says Saeed, a Social Child Protection Officer. “To reduce the child’s stress we need a lot of awareness. We need to especially advise the parents to trust the government, and not suppress the cases, or hide them. They should step forward and register them in the police stations.” He said that the government has taken these cases very seriously.
The accused arrested in the recent incident in Quetta was himself sexually abused as a child, and faced inattention from his family, leading him to end up with undealt trauma. He turned towards watching violent pornography which further affected his young mind.
“It shows that if children are victims of sexual abuse and their grief and pain are ignored, they can become criminals themselves,” said SSP Muhammad Baloch.
Experts give many reasons as to why children are abused like this. In some incidents children are exchanged in order to quell family feuds. In other incidents children are victims because of pedophilia. However all of them agree that one big factor for child sexual abuse is that of underage children working outside their homes, and who often also end up in prostitution in order to make more money in less time. At least 0.3 million children are currently out of school and many of them work as labourers. In a poor and backward province like Balochistan, most families tend to send their children out of the homes to work rather than to attend school.