Lahore High Court sets free convicts of life imprisonment in Kasur child abuse scandal

Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday acquitted three convicts serving life imprisonment in the Kasur child abuse scandal of 2015.

The scandal came to light eight years ago when a gang was arrested for involvement in making videos of the sexual abuse of at least 280 children. The criminals were accused of blackmailing the families of the kids, threatening them to leak the videos unless they paid ransom.

The acquittal of the convicts was announced by a bench of two judges, led by Justice Shehram Sarwar Chaudhry.

One of the counsels, Abid Hussain Khichi while speaking to Dawn, said that the court had released his clients after accepting their pleas.

According to the council, a total of six primary suspects had been implicated in the case, with three having been released earlier, while the remaining three were acquitted today.

Khichi further explained that his clients (convicts) serving in jail have not been identified in the video examination conducted by the authorities. He also contended that certain sections of the Anti-Terrorism Act applied to the accused were not truly applicable, and the medical reports did not substantiate the presented evidence.

The present order by the court substantiates the narrative of the lawyer.

The three men — Haseem Amir, Wasim Sindhi, and Aleem Asif — were handed punishments in one of the nine cases police had registered against them. ATC judge Chaudhry Muhammad Ilyas had also imposed a fine of Rs300,000 on each of the three convicts.

Ganda Singhwala police had registered a first information report against the three convicts on charges of abducting and sexually assaulting children in Kasur.

It was reported that the men had also been blackmailing the families of the boys since 2009 and even sold video clips of the assault. In 2018, an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Lahore sentenced the three men to life in prison after finding them guilty.

Kasur is a district plagued by such incidents. According to a report by Pakistan Observer Kasur stood first in child sexual abuse and pornography with 298 cases out of 2275 across the country during the year 2021.