Man gets death, wife life term for sex crimes

Couple sexually assaulted 45 girls, filmed obscene videos

RAWALPINDI:

A man was sentenced to death while his wife was jailed for life for kidnapping, sexually assaulting, blackmailing and filming obscene videos of dozens of girls by a Rawalpindi court on Monday.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Jahangir Gondal awarded the death sentence to Qasim Jahangir along with three-year imprisonment. The court also imposed a total fine Rs2.5 million on him.

Moreover, the convict’s wife, Kiran Jahangir, was sentenced to life. She was ordered to pay a fine of one million rupees as well.

The couple confessed to the sexual assault on 45 girls, taking their photographs and making inappropriate videos of at least 10 victims.

The case had attracted media attention for weeks in 2019 after a married female student was abducted from outside the Gordon College by a woman, later identified as Kiran Jahangir, who had pretended to be a fellow student.

Offering a lift to her, Kiran had lied to the student that her brother was coming to pick her up in a while. After a few minutes, a man arrived in a grey car after which the woman pushed the victim inside the vehicle and threatened her with a knife to silence her.

The student was taken to a house in Gulistan Colony where Qasim Jahangir, the husband, raped her while Kiran took pictures and filmed the crime, the victim had said.

They had threatened and blackmailed the victim by showing her sexually explicit video. She was dropped on Tipu Road later at night.

According to the complainant, the man had kidnapped several girls aged between eight and 12 with the help of his wife and subjected them to the heinous crime.

Later, police had arrested the suspects and found dozens of porn videos of local women on their mobile phones, laptops and pen drives. Police had also found photographs and video clips at the house of the convicts.

Police officials said the couple had sold the videos and photos to an international porn website.

‘A good omen’

Reacting to the court verdict, Human Rights Association (HRA) Chairman Masood Shah and lawyer Tayabba Abbas opined that strict laws should be made against rape and the act of filming sex crimes.

They commented that the trial of such suspects should be completed within three months while the minimum punishment should be a death sentence.

The lawyers said an unprecedented rise had been recorded in molestation cases with women and children in Rawalpindi during the past year. To curtail them, strict punishments was the only way forward, they added.

High Court Bar Association (HCBA) President Malik Waheed Anjum and District Bar secretary General Imran Yousuf said they were ready to cooperate with the bench for speedy trials in such cases.

Human rights activist Sameera Gul said the rape convicts should be made examples for others. She asserted that “moderate punishments in these cases” had not been effective.

She hailed the sessions’ judge for holding speedy proceedings in the case and termed the verdict a good omen. She added that the high courts and the Supreme Court (SC) needed to set a similar precedent in rape cases.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 26^th, 2021.