Sexual assault: Victim gets protection to pursue prosecution

Girl directed to forgo prosecution in return for Rs120,000 compensation.

MUZAFFARGARH:

Two Mehmood Kot policemen have been deployed at the house of a 15-year-old girl in Aari Teri village in Qasba Gujrat area to provide protection to her family. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and sexually assaulted on Thursday night.

The protection was ordered after the family said that the suspects would try to kill them for registration of the police case. Girl’s brother Sabir Ahmed* and her uncle Naeem Ahmed* had earlier refused to prosecute the suspects and told the police that they had agreed to the panchayat’s decision to settle the matter out of court.

They said the panchayat supervised by former mayor Chaudhry Khalid and Shaikh Shafi had decided that the family would not pursue a police case against the suspects, Khalid Chawan and Ashraf Khokhar, whose families would pay Rs60,000 each in compensation for the crime.

However, an FIR was registered against the suspects under Sections 365B and 376/2 of the Pakistan Penal Code after the police found out about the incident through reports in the media.  The suspects and the panchayat leaders have since gone into hiding.  Investigation Officer Allah Bachaya told The Tribune that sexual assault had been confirmed in a medical examination of the girl carried out at a rural health centre in Mehmood Kot.

SHO Farooq Ata said the names of the people who arranged the panchayat were not included in the FIR because there was no complaint against them. He said two police men would perform security duty at the victim’s house.

Talking to The Express Tribune earlier Khalid Chawan’s father Ghulam Mustafa said he regretted his son’s act but felt that it ‘was not so serious that he should be prosecuted for it’. He said he was ready to pay a reasonable compensation to the girl’s family.

The panchayat was arranged after the girl was brought to her house by some passers by who found her lying unconscious near a field early on Friday morning. The victim told the family that she had been sexually assaulted by the suspects at their farm house.

*Names have been changed to protect victim’s identity

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2012.