Alleged rape: Two arrested for assaulting hearing-impaired woman

Family discovers the assault after six months into the pregnancy


Mudassir Raja February 16, 2016
PHOTO: FILE

RAWALPINDI:


A magistrate granted the police four-day physical remand of two people — one man and one woman — accused in the alleged rape of a hearing-and-speech-impaired woman here on Tuesday.


The police had requested seven-day remand of the suspects to conduct DNA tests on the man, but Magistrate Mumtaz Mughal rejected the plea and only granted four days.

Earlier, the police had booked three men for the alleged rape of the 27-year-old after doctors at the Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH) confirmed her pregnancy on Monday.

Her family had been unaware of the assault and the pregnancy.

“Doctors at Benazir Bhutto Hospital confirmed that the victim is six-months pregnant. We have registered a case on complaint of the victim’s brother,” a police official from the Morgah Police Station told The Express Tribune.

He added that she had been enrolled in a vocational training and rehabilitation centre in Gulistan colony since the age of 12. The centre, which is run by a retired army officer, had provided her with pick-and-drop service from the beginning.

In a statement to the investigation team, the woman’s brother had accused the owner of the institute, a female colleague and a driver from the centre of assaulting his sister. The female accused and the driver have been arrested and remanded.

He said that last week, the family had taken her to BBH after she had complained of stomach pain, where the doctors informed them that she was six months’ pregnant. He said that for a few months earlier, she had tried to seek remedy for kidney pains from several private clinics.

According to her brother, she had explained in sign language that the female suspect had taken her home, where the driver and the woman drugged her, and she was subsequently raped.

Her brother said that the police had initially refused to file a complaint against the accused and that the vocational centre’s administration had been harassing the family.

He had then contacted the local union council chairman, who intervened and got the police to register the First Information Report (FIR) four days after the compliant. The FIR nominates the driver, the woman at whose house the alleged rape took place, and the owner of the institute.

The victim claimed that she could identify the assailants if they were produced before her.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 17th, 2016.

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