Lahore police ask to put pedophiles under fourth schedule

A person who is on fourth schedule has to mark his attendance fortnightly in police station concerned

LAHORE: Lahore Police has asked for a policy to introduce a monitoring mechanism for child molesters, similar to the fourth schedule list.

Fourth Schedule of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 is related to persons and organisations that have been declared proscribed. The person who has been categories into the fourth schedule requires “to seek prior permission from the officer in charge of the police station of the concerned area before moving from his permanent place of residence for any period of time and to keep him informed about the place.

He also needs to inform the relevant police station about his movements, interaction with schools, colleges and other institutions where a person under 21 years of age or women are given education or other training or are housed permanently or temporarily.

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Visits to theatres, cinemas, fairs, amusement parks, hotels, clubs, restaurants, teashops and other places of public entertainment or resort, airports, railway stations, bus stands, telephone exchanges, television stations, radio stations and other such places, playing fields are restricted in this case.

Deputy Inspector General Lahore Police Operations (DIG) Ashfaq Ahmad Khan in this regard said police could not counter such persons who were involved in moral crimes especially child molesting through preventive measures like increase patrolling or visibility of police.

Offences against property are preventable through policing techniques like patrolling and detection etc unlike crime against property like moral crimes.

Awareness campaigns and engaging community prove effective in preventing such crimes. He said introducing child molesters tracking system can also be helpful.

A person who is on the fourth schedule had to mark his attendance fortnightly in the concerned police station otherwise a case would be registered against him.

He asked for introducing such tracking system for child molesters and asked for introducing two restrictions for them; one he should mark his attendance secondly whenever he changes his residence, he should inform the next place of his residence so that it could come into the knowledge that a child molester had come into the community.

He said in the developed countries, whenever a child molester moves to a location, a notification is issued and the community is informed. Secondly, a GSP band is installed into him through which his movement is monitored by police. He voiced that this system will help in curbing the crime.

Child molestation has come up as a serious issue in the last few years in the country after few very tragic cases came on the surface especially Zainab murder case in Kasur, Hasnain Khanwala case and Chunian murder case.

In Zainab murder case and Chunian case, a serial killer was involved. In Chunian case, the suspect has already been jailed for his crime. the cases of child molestation keep on being reported consistently in the country.

The severity of the case can be analysed by a report of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working for children’s rights issued in September this year. It revealed that at least 1,304 cases of child sexual abuse were reported in the media in Pakistan during the first six months of the current year.

Out of these, the victims were identified as 729 girls and 575 boys. Around 12 boys and girls were murdered after being sexually assaulted, the report added.

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More data from Sahil shows that at least 3,832 cases of child sexual abuse were reported in 2018; this means that around 10 cases were reported daily. This number witnessed an increase of more than 11% compared to 2017, during which 3,445 cases were reported.

However, concrete steps in this regard needed to be materialized by the provincial and federal government.

After Hasnain Khanwala child pornography case, the Punjab government had delineated a strategy and promised certain steps to take immediately. However, these were yet to be materialised. As far the federal government is concerned, the National Assembly had passed a bill the National Commission on the Rights of the Child Act 2017. Its scope was the whole of Pakistan and the challenges faced against contravention of Children rights were being discussed in it. However, concrete steps were yet to be materialised.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 23^rd, 2019.