Family of gang-rape victim appeals for help

The family of a teenage gang-rape victim has made a passionate appeal to Punjab Chief Minister for justice.

The family of a teenage gang-rape victim has made a passionate appeal to Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif for justice.

The 15-year-old daughter of labourer Bashir Ahmed was allegedly gang-raped to death by local influential people in May 2010 in the Satrah village of Daska tehsil.

Ahmad told journalists on Wednesday that his daughter used to work in the house of a local landlord as a housemaid.

“On May 27, she was returning home from work when she was kidnapped by four drunken men,” Ahmed said, identifying the men as Waheed, Tariq, Billu and Asif. “They took her to nearby fields where they poured liquor into her mouth and gang-raped her,” Ahmed alleged. Later the rapists were also joined by their four more cronies – Samar Shah, Khalid, Akram and Rizwan, he claimed. And they gang-raped the girl until she fell unconscious. They threw her near her house in the village considering she was dead, Ahmed told reporters.

She managed to crawl into her house after regaining consciousness. However, she died a few hours after the incident but not before narrating her ordeal to her parents and identifying the alleged rapists.

The girl’s brother, Liaqat, told journalists that the alleged rapists belonged to an influential family and they forced them to bury the body without an autopsy. “The rapists are roaming around freely and threatening us against reporting the incident,” he claimed. The family appealed to the provincial chief minister for justice. They threatened to commit mass suicide outside the Chief Minister’s House in Lahore, if the alleged rapists were not taken to task.

Civil Judge Daska, Ali Arsalan, has ordered the girl’s body be exhumed for a post-mortem examination on a writ petition filed by her family.  Meanwhile, the Satrah police have registered a case against the eight alleged rapists under section 376-II PPC three weeks after the incident. The police said they are investigating the charges.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 17^th, 2010.