Cleric 'brutally thrashes' girl for going out of class without permission

Parents complain accused used to beat children with iron rod

MULTAN: In a weird act of punishment, an eight-year-old girl was tortured and hanged with a rope for going out of a class without permission by a cleric of a religious seminary at Qadir Pur Raan in Multan on Tuesday.

Local police told The Express Tribune that Mahnoor, eight, a student of Madrassah Ameer Muawiya, went out of the classroom to drink water without the permission of cleric Qari Abdul Haq. When the girl came back in the classroom, the cleric tortured her and hanged her from a tree in the yard of the seminary, the police said.

When contacted, victim’s father Muhammad Jameel said that he received a call from the madressah administration to pick his daughter as she was not feeling well. “When I reached the madressah, I found her lying unconscious and there were marks of torture on her face, arms, neck and other parts of the body,” he added.



He pointed out, “I took my daughter to a hospital and when she regained consciousness after three hours, she revealed that cleric Abdul Haq tortured her and hanged her with a rope.”

Meanwhile, area residents, whose children also go to the same seminary, told this scribe that they received complaints from their children that the cleric inflicts violence on the children on regular basis.

They said the cleric also beat their children with steel rod. “Abdul Haq broke the ankle of my five-year-old son by beating him with an iron rod,” Abdul Qayyum, a father lamented.

A case was registered against Qari Abdul Haq at Qadir Pur Raan police station on the complaint of victim’s father. The police claimed that the cleric had confessed of committing the crime and was under arrest.