Crime against children: Six-year-old girl critical after sexual assault

One of the three suspects gets pre-arrest bail.

BAHAWALPUR: A six-year-old girl is in a critical condition at a hospital after she was raped allegedly by three men on Wednesday. She was later abandoned in front of her home.

Meanwhile, police have arrested two of the three suspects, while one of them managed to get a pre-arrest bail from a court.

The father of the girl, a resident of Khari Kundi village near Bahawalpur, said his daughter was playing outside their home, when the suspects kidnapped her. He said they raped her and later abandoned her outside her home in an unconscious condition.

He said a neighbour saw the men riding two motorcycles take his daughter with them and informed him. He said he and his family then looked for the girl and found her lying on a roadside a few hours later.

They took her to the district headquarters hospital, from where doctors referred her to Bahawal Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur. Doctors, treating the girl at the children’s ward, conducted her medico-legal examination, which confirmed that she had been raped.

Station House Officer Pervez Iqbal Bajwa told The Express Tribune that two of the suspects will be produced before a court on September 25, he said. District Police Officer Sohail Habib Tajik visited the girl at the hospital and assured the parents of a transparent inquiry.

The girl’s parents have appealed the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the president and the chief minister to take notice of the incident.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21^st, 2012.