Alleged rapist spared mob justice, held by police

A local NGO accuses him of raping 15 girls so far.

GUJRANWALA: A man caught red-handed Wednesday evening while attempting to rape an eight-year-old girl in a graveyard on Lanbanwali Road, Rahanwali, was spared lynching by a mob by the police.

An eyewitness, who requested not to be named, said he heard screams and turned to see an old-man,  Muhammad Hussain alias Kalaa, forcibly trying to undress a girl. While he rushed to save her, he said, others attracted by the shouts started turning up.

“While some of us rescued the girl, the mob got hold of the man and took him to a nearby dera and started beating him up,” he told The Express Tribune, “We were afraid he might end up like the two brothers in Sialkot so we contacted the Cantonment police and told them about the incident,” the eyewitness said.

The girl’s father, Muhammad Shabir, said that Hussain used to be their neighbour in Tarigari village. Sabir said he along with his family had shifted to Rajkot area of Shaheenabad from where Hussain abducted the girl and brought her to the graveyard.

“He grabbed me and took me to the graveyard. He started undressing me and said ‘Don’t worry you’re my wife’,” the girl told The Express Tribune.

Al-Madad welfare society, a Gujranwala-based non-government organisation, alleged that this was not the first time Hussain had been found involved in such acts. The society officials said that he had allegedly raped 15 girls of the area. They said that he had been assaulting the girls and leaving them in terrible conditions at a nearby railway crossing.

The officials said they had rescued 13 girls and took them to the police station but a case could never be registered as no one testified against the man. They added that the affected families, afraid of the shame it would bring, never went ahead and pursued a case against the man.

SHO Cantonment police station, Ameer Abbass, said they have registered a case and will make sure that the accused was brought to justice after an impartial investigation.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 3^rd, 2010.