Zaara Liaqat
Student at IIUI
“4 men abducted a girl from Benazir Hospital and took her to tarnol and gang raped. She came to visit her mother.’’
This is just one headline from a newspaper. We don’t know how many cases like this are happening in our country on daily Officials are not paying attention to these types of cases.
If we look back. There were so many cases like “Uzma Ayub Rape case” In which Uzma Ayub alleged 13 men kidnapped her, kept her in custody for 11 months and repeatedly raped her. Uzma Ayub was pregnant when she returned home in September 2011. Then what happened to that case no culprit was arrested. And worst thing was that her brother who was supporting her was got killed in front of court on International Human Rights Day.
Eventually the case was dismissed from the Peshawar High Court. The court closed its file with directions to the trial court to decide the case on the evidence available.
Another case happened in Lahore which was “Baby Sana rape case” On August 3, 2009; Sana went missing from home around 1 pm. Her family lodged a missing-persons report at the Zaman Town police station by 10 pm the same day. After two days two culprits got arrested and they confessed that they raped her and strangulated her and dumped her body in a gutter. From these two men one was constable in traffic police. Court sentenced traffic constable a death penalty and other man awarded 10 years in prison with RS. 10,000 fine.
But no one hanged and no one spend 10 years in prison. They both are freely living their lives after ruing the lives of others.
There was another case happened in Karachi on Mazar-e-Quaid. Razia Kubra, an 18-year old woman of Lodhran, was gang raped inside Mazar-e-Quaid allegedly by the mausoleum employees on March 9, 2008, when she came to pay homage to founder of the nation along with her family members. Three accused got arrested after confirmed DNA report which assure their involvement.
But what happened to that case “Nothing”. Three accused men were acquitted.
These were the open and shut cases but no justices provided to any victim.
If we look up in recent incident in Muzaffargarh when the 18-year-old rape victim had set herself on fire on March 13 in front of the Mir Hazar Khan police station after hearing that the suspects who had allegedly raped her were granted bail. With 70% of her body burnt, the girl had succumbed to her injuries on March 14 in the hospital.
“Is that really easy to abduct rape and kill a woman in our country?”
Rape and sexual assault are not only the case, which our Pakistani women faced. They are also facing honor killing. The recent incident happened. Two women of the Mahar tribe had allegedly been killed by their parents for having ‘illicit relations’ with men of the Jagirani tribe. The Jagiranis were fined a total of Rs2.4million for ‘kidnapping’ and ‘having illicit relations’ with the women. The jirga was apparently held to settle a potentially explosive tribal dispute, but while both parties accepted its decision, astonishingly, no one was penalized for murdering the women. Even more shocking, an MNA, the PML-F’s Ghous Baksh Mahar, presided over the jirga.
In Pakistan women are only considered as an object. Our Ulma e ikram say to rape victim bring four witnesses. Now how and from where she bring witnesses to prove her point. This is the mentality of our Ulma e ikram. Council of Islamic Ideology say that DNA test is not mandatory in rape cases.
According to Human rights report in 2008 honor killing were 1042 and gang rape were 305. According to the research the cases of honor killing happened mostly on suspension or doubts.
According to another research, 171 rape cases were reported in 2013. However, no one paid attention.
In order to bring justice, we should first bring revolutionary changes in our system, in our law making institutions. Moreover, the culprits must be given the harshest penalty possible so that he or any other person does not even think of committing such action again.