Police on Saturday booked seven people for gang-raping a minor orphan girl for five months. She was repeatedly assaulted by the suspects who blackmailed her and threatened to kill her younger brother, Dawn reported.
According to the FIR, an orphan girl of Basti Odki Abdullah Shah was allegedly gang-raped by two locals at gunpoint about four to five months ago after the suspects found her alone at her house when her mother was away working as a housemaid.
The FIR stated the two suspects threatened to murder the victim’s only younger brother Ahmed if she told anyone about the rape.
Police sources said the girl, however, had informed her mother about the incident who kept visiting the local police station to register the complaint but because of some locally influential people, she was turned away by police officials of the area.
Meanwhile, another local joined the two suspects in the heinous crime and they would gang-rape the girl whenever they found her alone.
Some three months ago, four other men of the same area caught the suspects red-handed while they were assaulting the girl in the fields and they too blackmailed and raped her. The FIR said that as a result of repeatedly being rape, the girl got pregnant.
The sources said some of the police officials forced the victim’s mother into taking the matter to the panchayat (village jury).
The panchayat decided that the suspects would pay a certain amount to the girl’s mother as compensation and she, along with her two children, leave the village. The girl’s family came to Lahore following the decision.
However, the family returned to the village and again contacted the police for registration of a case against the suspects.
Finally, the district police officer took notice of the incident and on his orders, the local police station in Bahawalnagar registered an FIR against all the seven suspects under Section 376 of the Pakistan Penal Code.
District police spokesperson Saleem Ayaz admitted that the girl’s family had approached the police for help but meanwhile, a local panchayat interfered and settled the issue on its own.
He said a case against the seven suspects was registered on the order of DPO Zafar Buzdar and three of them had been detained, while raids were being conducted to arrest the others.
