The Federal Ombudsman has blamed drugs, prostitution and pornographic movies for the rise in the number of child abuse cases in Kasur, a private media outlet reported Tuesday.
According to the Ombudsman report, 272 cases of abortions were reported in Kasur during the past 10 years. In 2008, the abortion rate was 6.2 per cent, which jumped to 16.2 per cent in 2018.
The report further says that there have been 272 cases of child abuse, but in only 2.6 per cent cases the culprits have been punished.
Surprisingly, an overwhelming majority of culprits – 92 per cent to be precise – were educated people, while parents and relatives of most victims – 70 per cent to be precise – were either illiterate.
The report has cited a number of reasons for the rising incidents of child abuse in Kasur. However, mostly the culprits use political or tribal influence or bribe the police to hush up the cases.
The report says that local landlords and politicians backed the culprits in most cases by putting pressure on the parents of the victims to stop pursuing the charges or withdraw the cases.
The report further states that it has always been a difficult task to bring the culprits to justice in child abuse cases in Kasur. It has also referred to a lack of protection to witnesses in such cases and the negative role of local lawyers.
According to the report, there had been 4,139 child abuse cases in 2017. Of which 1,089 cases had been reported in Punjab alone.
