Girl allegedly gang raped in Haripur delivers stillborn

Victim’s father says police trying to hush up the matter to protect the suspect

HARIPUR: Police have yet to arrest the suspects who allegedly blackmailed and abused a teenaged girl for nine months in the Gorki village on the outskirts of Haripur.

The victim delivered a stillborn child through an illegal abortion after a lady doctor told her parents that she was eight  months pregnant. For eight months they had no clue that their daughter was being assaulted and moving around pregnant, neither the victim had the courage to open up about the alleged blackmailers.

Father of the 16-year-old victim, while talking to The Express Tribune on Saturday said he has registered a case against Rafaqat and his other accomplices at the Saddar police station.

He said police had been trying to hush up the matter for five days because the prime suspect involved in the rape of his daughter is from an influential family. Police did not arrest the suspect despite being nominated in the FIR and even helped him escape from the area, he added.

The key suspect, Rafaqt, had threatened his daughter of dire consequences if she told anyone about the incident and the sexual assault continued for almost nine months, said the complainant.

The victim’s father further said his daughter had abdominal pain after which he and his wife took her to a lady doctor who told them about her pregnancy with an eight-month-old baby. The doctor demanded Rs5,000 for abortion. They paid the amount and even then the lady doctor took gold worth Rs10,000 from his wife and handed over the abortion to a midwife identified as Mahjabeen. The midwife got the victim admitted at the Dhainda district headquarters hospital on her own national identity card and performed the abortion.

According to the victim’s statement to police the prime suspect Rafaqat had promised to marry her but then he blackmailed her and forced her into sex with his friends.

Meanwhile, Haripur District Police Officer Syed Ashfaq Anwar took notice of the incident and directed the relevant police station to register an FIR against the suspects under the CrPC Sections 376, 338C, 200, 201, 419 and 34.

DPO Anwar also ordered registration of case against the doctor and the midwife for performing an abortion illegally.

Police have allegedly been involved in hushing up the matter and has advised the suspect for a bail before arrest. Meanwhile, Jamat-e-Islami leader Imran Khan Alizai said that if police did not stop trying to save the suspect, they will protest for provision of justice to the poor girl.

Haripur Saddar police station SHO Qazi Muhammad Ajmal told The Express Tribune that police teams have been tasked for the arrest of the suspects and soon they would be being the bars.  

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2020.