The 15-year-old girl, gang-raped in a guesthouse in Lahore’s Mall Road area on Friday, in her statement told police on Saturday that the key criminal was Education Minister Rana Mashhood’s personal staff officer (PSO).
Mashhood, on the other hand, denied having any knowledge about the alleged culprit – PML-N Youth Wing Additional Secretary General Mian Adnan Sanaullah.
A senior police official said the girl, taken captive by unidentified men from Rana Town area of Multan Road, was drugged before being raped by six to eight men in a guest house on Mall Road.
Station House Officer for Race Course Police Station Ahmad Usman further said that medical reports at Services Hospital confirmed that the teenage, an 8th grade student, had been subjected to rape and physical torture. He said that six suspects had been arrested while two to three main suspects were still at large.
DIG Operations Haider Ashraf said that three teams had been formed to investigate the case, adding that “raids are being conducted to arrest all the accused”. The criminals will be presented before a court on Sunday (today).
Reportedly, the rapists, after having sexually assaulted the girl, messaged her family to come and pick her up (from a spot).
The girl went missing after she left to see a tailor along with her brother. According to her mother, the girl was taken captive from there on and later was reported to have been raped. She was shifted to Services Hospital in critical condition. Mother of the victim demanded the authorities to arrest the culprits and do justice in the matter.
Brother of the victim told the police that the culprits had abducted his sister using a dark Honda Civic.
In her statement, the rape victim said that she was intoxicated and later raped.
Rape is notoriously difficult to prosecute in Pakistan. In April 2011, the Supreme Court had upheld the acquittal of five men sentenced to death in Pakistan’s most famous rape case that of Mukhtar Mai.
Mai was gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council as punishment, after her brother, who was aged just 12 at the time, was accused of having illicit relations with a woman from a rival clan.
A local court had sentenced six men to death, but a higher court acquitted five of them in March 2005, and commuted the sentence for the main accused, Abdul Khaliq, to life imprisonment.