Controversy in case of girl ‘raped by police’

ISLAMABAD: The Assistant Session Judge Taxilla sent two police officials accused of raping a teenage girl on judicial remand this Wednesday.

The girl had claimed that she was gang-raped and that she was pregnant. According to a statement issued by an eight-member Medical Board on May 27, 2010, the girl is not pregnant.

Her counsel Farhana Qammar said that the girl, N, never claimed she was pregnant. “In her statement, the girl had stated that she ‘thought’ she was pregnant,” the counsel claimed.

“She had also stated in her statement on April 17 that she was drugged, therefore, complete medical tests were required as she could not recall the nature of her abuse,” Qammar added.

Two days after the medical board stated that N was not pregnant; she appeared in court and alleged that she was sodomised by the police officials during her detention in the police station.

Tests of the victim girl to establish the charges of sodomy have not been carried out. Sources in the Police said that the girl was not cooperating with the police. “She was refusing to get the tests done on her as directed by the court in the last hearing,” said a police official.

However, the counsel for N, Farhana Qammar, said that the police deliberately delayed the tests.

“They did not take the girl for the tests.

They have also failed to submit the challan within 14 days of the registration of the FIR. I would request the court to seek explanation of this failure in the next hearing,” she said.

On May 29, Assistant Sessions Judge (ASJ) Taxilla ordered the police to take samples of both the victim and the accused and get them tested to establish whether she was sodomized.

However, the DNA samples of both the victim and the main accused Sub-Inspector Muhammad Mumtaz, have yet to be collected.

Mumtaz had moved the court for DNA tests and has volunteered to bear all expenses. Accused Inspector Sajid Gondal has obtained bail from a Session Court in Rawalpindi and Mumtaz has also applied for his bail in the court of ASJ Taxila.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2010.