Hospital staff accused of assaulting 17-year-old

Patient's daughter raped by three ward servants.

GUJRANWALA: In the civil hospital, three ward servants have been accused of raping a patient’s daughter and police officials have registered a case.

Jandiala Bagh Wala resident 70-year-old Saifullah was admitted to the hospital for an eye operation on Friday. Saifullah’s 17-year-old daughter Iqra accompanied him for the surgery.

According to Iqra, one of the optometry ward workers Amir Shehraz asked her to accompany him to the pharmacy to get her father’s free medicine. “I told him that I had to go home first and prepare food for my father and I,” she said, adding that she took a rickshaw from the hospital and headed home. Iqra said that her house was located only 7-8 minutes away from the hospital and that when she was walking back towards the hospital Shehraz stopped in front of her in a black Cultus. “He was with his two friends and they said that they were going back to the hospital and could give me a lift,” Iqra said.  Shehraz, Muhammad Waqas and Waheed Butt drove towards a shack rather than the hospital. Iqra said that during the journey the men gagged and blindfolded her. “They forced a bite of food they had brought down my throat and I think I fainted,” she said, adding that when she woke up she found herself in a shack near upper Chenab canal and the men gang raped her. “I was tied up and I couldn’t scream for help because I was gagged,” she said. Iqra said that the three accused ran away from the shack and tied her to a pillar. “I managed to get free after a while and ran back to the hospital,” she said. According to the station house officer (SHO) Rana Islam, the accused escaped the scene and Iqra’s father called the police when she returned to the hospital and told him what happened. “The men escaped the scene but we have teams looking for them. They will not get away,” he said.

A medical report confirmed that Iqra had been gang raped and several staff attendants at the hospital told police officials that they had seen the three ward boys leave the hospital in a black Cultus that morning. “I saw the boys get into a car soon after Iqra told me that she would be leaving to prepare food for her father,” said a nurse at the hospital Maheen, who added that Iqra said she would return within an hour. “When she didn’t return by evening her father began to get worried and we started asking around,” the nurse said.

Police officials are currently searching for the whereabouts of Sheraz, Waqas and Waheed.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2010.