Cast away: Victims of rape forced to fight on multiple fronts

Most are coerced into settling the case outside court to preserve ‘dignity’.

PESHAWAR:

Covered in a traditional burqa and accompanied by her parents, Farahnaz* recently appeared in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) to attend the bail hearing of two men accused of raping her.

The alleged victim, hailing from Shakar Darra area of Kohat district, revealed at the premises of the high court that she and her family members are being pressured to withdraw the case against the high-profile accused – the brother and cousin of the provincial assembly’s deputy speaker Imtiaz Shahid Qureshi.

It is a known fact that the real plight of a rape victim in the country begins after the incident, when she has to make rounds of the judiciary, while facing an extremely patriarchal society. In most of the cases, the accused go scot-free owing to lack of witnesses and outside settlements to ‘save the family’s honour’.

Farahnaz, said to be in her mid-twenties, was allegedly raped in Kohat on May 6 while she was alone in the house and the police reluctantly registered the FIR two days after the incident, reportedly owing to the ‘influential’ nature of the accused.

After the accused were denied bail by a local court, they approached the high court. The case is likely to drag on, with Farahnaz and her family not only being approached through back channels to ‘settle’ it, but also being forced to make back and forth trips between Kohat and Peshawar and suffer the accompanying costs of litigation.

The victim has accused her alleged rapists of threatening her, saying they are part of the government and will come down hard on her family in case she does not take back the case.

She claims her family has been offered money whereas her own husband has also been approached by the other side. Farahnaz’s family has gone to several lawyers asking them to take up their case, but they are yet to find someone to defend them in court.

Legal experts claim Farahnaz is in need of security as well as help from the civil society owing to the special nature of the case.

“Under the Constitution, it is the responsibility of the state to provide security to life and property of every citizen but in rape cases the government needs to take extra measures. Many victims do not report their cases and those who report it face such problems,” Advocate Ijaz Sabi told The Express Tribune.

He further said the government is also required to have a monitoring system for these types of cases as the accused belong to influential families in most of the cases.

Another woman’s plight

Uzma Ayub from Karak district also faced similar problems and lost her brother during the trial when she was en route to a district court in her hometown.

Alamzeb Khattak was gunned down on December 9, 2011, within the limits of a Karak court, while escorting his sister during a case appearance.

According to an FIR registered by Uzma’s mother at Takhte Nusrati police station, and her own testimony at PHC on October 13, 2011, 13 men allegedly abducted her, kept her in custody for 11 months and repeatedly raped her.

Uzma was pregnant when she returned home in September 2011. She maintains that one of the accused is the father of her daughter, Zeba.

Later, due to security reasons, former PHC chief justice Dost Muhammad Khan transferred the case from Karak to Peshawar. Police personnel were also deployed at Uzma’s house, but on April 7, 2013 the security was withdrawn.

On February 1, 2013, anti-terrorism court judge Syed Asghar Ali Shah acquitted all 13 suspects and disposed of the case.

Uzma, who later joined the provincial police force, challenged the acquittal in the high court. At present she attends the proceedings of her case donning the police uniform and is a living example of persistence.

*Name changed to protect identity

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2014.