July 22, 2026
By Iqra Manzoor
LAHORE
Police in Gujrat district have arrested four teenage students of a religious seminary after an 11-year-old boy was allegedly raped by his classmates, who are also accused of filming the incident on a mobile phone.
The complaint was lodged by the child’s grandfather, Muhammad Nawaz, who told police he and a relative, Naseer Ahmad, went to visit the boy, “Z” at the Jamia Madni Noor-ul-Quran seminary in Kotla Qasim Khan on the evening of July 17. Z had been enrolled there for religious instruction for close to a year.
According to the First Information Report (FIR), Nawaz did not find his grandson and, while searching the premises, heard the boy screaming from another room. Opening the door, he says he found Z being raped and filmed by his fellow students.
A relative of the family gave a slightly different account to Voicepk, saying the case first surfaced after Z came home with a fever and, when questioned by his mother, disclosed that older boys at the seminary had been mistreating him. That disclosure was passed to the grandfather, who then went to the seminary.
Meanwhile an FIR was registered on July 18 at Lalamusa Sadar Police Station under Sections 375-A and 292 of the Pakistan Penal Code — provisions dealing with aggravated sexual assault and obscene material. All four suspects, aged between roughly 12 and 17, were taken into custody, according to the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Gujrat Police.
Investigating officer Amjad Bashir told Voicepk that while an initial medical examination did not find physical signs consistent with rape, DNA testing had been ordered and results were pending at the time of reporting.
Bashir also said the seminary’s head cleric, or Qari, was not present when the incident is alleged to have occurred, having travelled to his home village. In his recorded statement to police, the Qari said he had no knowledge of the abuse. Investigators have so far found no evidence of a prior pattern of abuse at the seminary beyond the video recovered from the accused’s phones.
Station House Officer (SHO) Aftab Rasool of Lalamusa Sadar police station characterised the case as one of ‘sodomy’, and that further details would be released as the investigation progresses.
Part of a wider pattern
The Lalamusa case is not an isolated one, and both of the following cases were also reported within the same month. In Jhang district, a prayer leader was arrested after the father of a 13-year-old seminary student accused him of keeping the boy behind after lessons on July 12 and assaulting him at the mosque; police in that case registered an FIR under the rape provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and remanded the accused for interrogation.
In Sahiwal district, police arrested a prayer leader and a mosque caretaker after a complainant discovered, in mid-July, dozens of videos documenting the repeated abuse of madrassah students of both sexes; the FIR in that case was registered on July 18, 2026, and the investigation also implicated one of the accused in the separate, ongoing abuse of a disabled family member. Investigators in that case have said the accused appeared to have coerced students into abusing one another as well.
The case comes amid mounting alarm over child safety in religious and educational institutions across Pakistan. Earlier in July, the National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC) called for tighter safeguards for children with disabilities after allegations of abuse surfaced in Bahawalpur, while crediting police there for moving quickly to register a case and make arrests.
In a statement issued in late June, the commission said it was alarmed by a string of reports of abuse, violence and killings of children nationwide, and confirmed it had taken suo motu notice of eleven separate cases. It directed police departments to expedite investigations, arrest those responsible, and submit full case reports. The commission described the pattern as evidence of a deeper, systemic problem requiring coordinated action rather than case-by-case responses.
The NCRC has pressed federal and provincial authorities, along with law enforcement, to act on three fronts simultaneously: legal reform, stronger institutional safeguards, and a shift in the social attitudes that allow such abuse to persist.
Calls for oversight of seminaries
Central to the commission’s demands is stricter regulation of institutions that care for children — madrassas, maktabs and schools alike. Its recommendations include mandatory child-protection standards for staff and premises, background screening of staff against sex-offender records, formal codes of conduct with compliance monitoring, and accessible channels through which abuse can be reported.
The commission has also pushed for a broader shift toward family-based care and away from institutionalisation nationwide, along with case-management systems designed to identify and support at-risk children before harm occurs.