Exploitation: ‘Harappa police backing forced prostitution racket’

Man says his wife was sold for Rs170,000 for prostitution, seeks chief minister’s help.

LAHORE:

The Punjab chief minister has sought a report from the Sahiwal regional police officer (RPO) on a man’s complaint that a group of criminals had abducted his wife and sold her into prostitution, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Syed Bilal Shah Bukhari said that he was a daily wager. He said in late January he along with his wife and two children had moved from Rahim Yar Khan to Harappa—a place in Sahiwal district best known for the Indus Valley Civilisation archaeological site there—for better economic prospects. Their children were twins, a boy and a girl, who were a little over one-year-old at the time.

Bukhari said that on February 2 he went out for work, leaving his wife and children at the home of a friend named Muhammad Yar alias Kali. Bukhari said that when he returned, his family was missing and Kali told him that they had left without giving any reason or saying where they were going. The complainant said that he was informed by residents in the area that Kali, his wife, a man named Nana Maachi and an employee in the sessions court who was identified only as Mehboob had abducted and sold his wife to six men, including Ahmed Yar and Nasir for Rs170,000. Bukhari alleged that the accused had kept his wife confined with the intention of rape at village 741-GB in Kamalia tehsil of Toba Tek Singh district. He said that his children were also kept in the same place. Bukhari maintained that the accused had kept his wife and children illegally confined at village 741-GB and raped his wife.

Bukhari said that he had submitted an application to the Harappa police station but the station house officer (SHO) had refused to register a case. Bukhari said that when he went to the village the men who had bought his wife informed him that they had already struck a deal to sell her to another person for Rs320,000. Bukhari said that he then went to the prospective buyer and informed him that the woman he was going to buy was his wife who had been abducted. The man assured Bukhari that he would pull out of the deal and kept his word, he maintained. Bukhari claimed that Mehboob headed a gang that abducted women and forced them into prostitution at various places. He alleged that this was being done with the connivance of policemen in Harappa.

Bukhari said that he had begged and pleaded with several government officials before one persuaded the police to register a case on April 29, nearly three months after his family was abducted. But he said that the police had not included the appropriate section of the criminal law; the case was registered under Section 496-A (taking away or detaining a woman with criminal intent) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), leaving out Section 376 of the PPC (punishment for rape). He said that 10 persons had been nominated for involvement in his wife’s abduction but the police had not made any attempt to arrest any of them.

He requested the chief minister to take action against the accused and ensure the safe recovery of his wife and children.

The investigating officer in the case, Sub-Inspector Mujahid Hussain, told The Express Tribune that a raid had been conducted but no accused had been apprehended. He maintained that the police had later learned that the suspects had got interim bail in the case.

However, they had not yet joined the investigation, he added.

About police connivance in engaging in or facilitating prostitution of abducted women, Hussain said: “That is not in my knowledge.”

Harappa Station House Officer Mehar Yousaf said that despite several raids neither the accused had been arrested nor the abducted woman recovered.

“We have received a document from the superintendent’s office that the woman in question has filed a case in a civil court for dissolution of her marriage with Bukhari but that has not yet been verified,” Yousaf said.

The facts would come to light when the abducted woman was recovered or the accused arrested, Yousaf maintained.

Yousaf said that the Harappa police were making stringent efforts to complete the investigations.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2014.