DHA gang rape: Police arrest 4 suspects

Security personnel deployed at the entry and exit points of the city alerted to arrest remaining suspects.

KARACHI: Police officials have alerted security personnel deployed at the entry and exit points of the city to arrest those individuals who allegedly raped a girl.

Talking to Express News, DIG South Iqbal Mehmood said that the personnel have been provided with pictures of the accused. Police have also reportedly arrested four people who were involved in the crime. Investigation officer Ishaq Lashari says that the victim has identified one of those arrested as one of the attackers.

Updated from the print edition below.

DHA gang rape: Police question victim’s friend and party’s organiser

The Darakhshan police have started questioning a man identified as Lal Chand who allegedly organised a party that was attended by a young woman allegedly gang raped in DHA Sunday night.

The police are also questioning M, a friend of the victim K, who registered the FIR on Monday.

Clifton SP Tariq Dharejo told The Express Tribune that they made some headway with the help of the car’s tracker system and mobile phone call records. “I want to make it clear that there is no political gang behind the incident,” he said on Tuesday. “We also questioned the watchman of the apartment where Lal Chand resides and held the party and we are close to concluding the case.” He stressed that the police had not detained M, but were only questioning him.

Sources said that the police had acquired the phone numbers and vehicle registration number of the three to four men who rammed their car into the one being driven by K, who was accompanied by a friend S. The women’s car dived into a ditch, they were dragged from it, K was gang raped and they were later dumped in the area.

Dharejo said that they were working with information provided by the victim. They are investigating whether some fight took place at the party, prompting the attackers to follow the women after they left.

Sources in the police also said that there was intense political pressure on the case. According to a source, M gave the names of two men to the police — Vicky and Hashim — as the alleged perpetrators. Vicky, reportedly, has a number of powerful political backers and it is believed that the police are under pressure to remove his name from the investigation.

Police bias

However, the case has been embellished further. Overnight, new ‘details’ were added to the story by police officers. SHO Rana Amjad told The Express Tribune, “These girls were drunk. They said they stopped at [a restaurant] on their way back from the party, but we checked the CCTV footage of [the restaurant] and didn’t see them.”

The police also complained that the media circus that descended on the Darakhshan police station deterred them from doing their job. “It is a competition to see who can break the news first,” one officer remarked. “I told the media that they shouldn’t look for a Mukhtaran Mai in every rape case,” he said, referring to the prominent gang-rape survivor, educationist and human rights activist. “Yeh larkiyan Mukhtaran Mai nahi hain, yeh doosri maiyan hain!” [These women are no Mukhtaran Mai, they are just other mais.] Mai is an Urdu word that refers to a woman and can be used as both a derogatory or an honorific suffix.

Police officers have attempted to portray the women as call girls and cast serious doubts on their statements, despite the initial medico-legal report that verified that K had been raped and the fact that S’s injuries were severe enough to warrant 17 stitches.  The general assumption is that if the woman had a “bad character” it was acceptable to rape her.

Amjad said, “S and K were ‘known’ to the police in the area. There may be some complaints against S already; we are looking into the files. I think she is a dancer. We did not have any time to do this on Monday because we spent all day dealing with the media.” However, Chaudhry Amanat, an investigative officer at the Darakhshan police station, said, “This was just a doubt. No such case against S exists and the police don’t know either of the women.”

While the rape victim K and her friend S wanted to withdraw the complaint, Investigating Officer Ishaq Lashari said, “A complaint is not like ghar ka sauda [groceries] which you can return so easily. We will investigate this case and release details as we get them.”

Lashari told The Express Tribune that the police had met with the K’s friend, M, and had also spoken to K. K told the police that she was not staying at her residence any more but was with some loved ones [azeez] and would visit the police station on Tuesday to record her statement. However, one investigative police officer said that K - who said that she had been treated unfairly - had not come in to record a statement yet. The officer said that if this continued then the FIR would eventually be termed a Class-C FIR.

Not a white Corolla

Amjad said the car used by the perpetrators was a silver Corolla. Initial media reports had suggested that the car was a white Corolla, leading to speculation about the re-emergence of the ‘white Corolla gang’ which had been involved in the abduction and rape of women in Karachi. Amjad said the car may have been a rental.

Amjad denied there was any organised group involved in such cases, or that similar incidents had been reported in the vicinity.

He said a large number of people are at Seaview till the early hours of the morning and the police have received reports of “drunken men chasing women”. “We do have a police check post at Seaview and we monitor the situation. However in cases of women being chased or harassed, there are few complaints filed - otherwise we would have a mountain of FIRs.”

Legal angle

Human rights lawyer Zia Awan and other people have been following the case. “The way that this case has been portrayed by the police and the media reporting has not been conducive,” Awan said. “The women were portrayed to be of a ‘bad character’ - even if they are [sex workers] no one can [rape] them. It doesn’t matter what they were wearing or what time [they were out].” The portrayal has spread fear among parents who are worried about their daughters going out. It was very brave of these women to have come forward. People do come forward now because of the civil society and the positive role that the media has. “But our society is so offensive, there is such a huge stigma and discrimination that most cases are withdrawn or languish in courts for years,” he added. “The focus is always on the victims and never on the perpetrators — who always go scot free.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2010.