Who will protect children in Punjab?
LAHORE -
At least six girls, as young as seven-year-old, have been murdered after being raped in Kasur district of the Punjab province during the last couple of months.
The latest killing reported by police in the same district last week has sent shocking waves among the local population. Many people took to streets following the discovery of body of another child on Saturday. The police were investigating the murders with no arrest made yet.
Even extrajudicial killings have failed to stop such horrific crime. The district Kasur police killed a few suspects in staged encounters in the recent past. Reportedly, some officers claimed that the alleged criminals killed in police action in the same area had raped and killed children in separate incidents.
According to police, a teenage and a minor girl were found dead in different incidents in district Kasur on Saturday evening. The teen was found dead in the fields in the Sarai Mughal police precincts. Some passersby spotted her body and alerted the police by phone. The police reached the spot and shifted the body to the morgue for autopsy. Police were working to ascertain the identity of the victim.
In another incident, a 10-year-old girl was found dead in a deserted house on Khara Road on the same day. The A-Division police rushed to the spot and shifted the body to a hospital. Some locals contacted the police as they saw the dead body in the deserted house.
District police officer Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi along with heavy contingents of police reached the spot and shifted the body to THQ Hospital for a post-mortem. The girl was later identified as Laiba. She was on the way to a religious school (Madrassa) to read Quran but did not reach there. Special teams have been constituted to unearth and arrest the rapists-cum-killers.
All the young victims were targeted and killed in a similar style. The police have identified the bodies but failed to identify the criminals. The incidents of raping and killing of children have surfaced in the same district, almost two years after the country’s biggest child abuse scandal in Kasur made headlines across the globe.
The child abuse scandal had surfaced in Hussain Khanwala village of Kasur district. A racket of sexual predators was busted while hundreds of video clips along with photographs were recovered from the possession of the gang and they confessed their crime during investigations. An estimated 250 to 300 children , mostly boys, were the victims. The gang comprised of twenty-five men and they were continuously committing this heinous crime since 2005.
Many children are molested across the Punjab province every year. Also dozens of rape victims are killed by criminals.
Last month, a youngster allegedly killed a six years old girl after raping her at his home in Lahore’s Harbanspura police precincts. The mother had asked Zainab (the victims) to bring ice from a neighbour’s house. Zainab went to her neighbour’s house but did not return. After some time, her family started searching her but to no avail. The next day the family started the search again and focused the house where she was asked to visit.
During the search, Omar, the owner of the house, tried to flee. Locals managed to capture the accused and later he was handed over to the police. The accused was then shot dead in police action.
In April, a seven-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in Kasur district. According to police, the girl had left her house in the evening to buy milk but never returned home. Later that night, her body was found in a park near her house in the Saddar area.
Also, a minor girl aged seven was reportedly kidnapped and raped before being strangled to death on in Kasur district in February. Her body was recovered from an abandoned house near her residence and was shifted to the district hospital for medico-legal investigation which indicated strangulation as the cause of death. Locals and relatives of victim blocked Lahore-Kasur road and staged a strong protest demonstration against the killing.
There is no let-up in the incidents of child abuse in the “most developed” province. The rapists are killing the minor victims fearlessly but the police have failed to unearth the killers. Factually, police investigators are groping in the dark since several children have been molested and murdered by unknown criminals.
The incidents of child abuse, abductions, and even murders, have triggered fear and panic across the province. Residents say they believe some gangs are involved in the child abduction cases but the police investigators have failed to unearth the gangsters involved in this horrific crime.
A couple of years ago, the provincial police department had activated the specialised homicide investigation cell to investigate murder cases in Punjab , where more than 6,000 people were murdered in 2014. Hundreds of investigation officers were trained by forensic experts in collecting evidences, preservation of the crime scene and completion of legal proceedings.
According to the planned working of the homicide cell, every murder investigation shall be conducted in a scientific manner by employing every available technology with optimal utilisation of available resources.
Again, these “homicide cells” are unable to trace the criminals involved in raping and killing the children like the blind murder cases. Why police investigators have failed to trace the merciless killers and child rapists? Who will provide justice to the victim families and who will take initiatives to protect children in this province?
On the other hand, the police are interested in cases related to cash, property, and personal disputes. If children are being raped, abused, or murdered, that’s because of the “negligence on part of their parents”.
The recent incidents of child rape and murder should be an eye-opener for the provincial government. The police must do something to protect children who are most vulnerable to abduction, rape, and violence in this province.
https://nation.com.pk/10-Jul-2017/who-will-protect-children-in-punjab