The Punjab University is to conduct an investigation into the conduct of a clerk who allegedly blackmailed a girl who applied for a BA programme, The Express Tribune has learnt.
The police did not register a case against Muhammad Tariq for a lack of evidence, though some students were pushing for charges of blackmail and harassment against the clerk.
Abdul Majid, chairman of the Law Students Rights Council and a third-year LLB student at the University Law College, said the girl had approached the council with her problem. She was a final year MBBS student who went to PU to apply for admission to a 2-year BA programme, he said.
He said that she first encountered Tariq at the BA examination centre. Tariq offered to take and submit her application form so she wouldn’t have to stand in a long queue, he said.
The clerk asked for her phone number and said he would call her to tell her when she could pick up the receipt.
Majid said that Tariq began calling the girl and sending unwanted text messages. The girl decided to seek help from student leaders when Tariq told her he would not give her the receipt till she agreed to go out with him on a date, he said.
He said that earlier the girl took a friend with her to meet Tariq at the university cafeteria. “He insisted that she accompany him to a restaurant,” he said.
Majid said that Tariq got a rickshaw and took the girls towards Ichhra. At this point, he said, the girl started sending distress messages to her student allies.
Majid and other students stopped the rickshaw near a restaurant.
He said that they searched the clerk and found Rs18,000 on him, as well as three pills for enhanced sexual performance and one pill which was a sedative.
Tariq later got a call on his mobile phone, he said, from a hotel in Ichhra saying that his room was ready.
Majid said that they took Tariq to Muslim Town police station, where Station House Officer Imran Mehboob suggested that the parties reach a compromise.
He said that Tariq had admitted in front of the police to blackmailing the girl.
He said that University Resident Officer Javeed Sami had pledged to start a departmental inquiry against Tariq.
Many member of the PU employees’ union turned up at the police station to press for their colleague’s release. Union member Munir Awan said, however, that Tariq’s statements to the police were “dubious and shameful”.
SHO Mehboob said that there was no evidence against Tariq, and the girls had not turned up at the police station to lodge a complaint, so the police could not detain him.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 4th, 2011.
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