SAHIWAL: During a road robbery in the presence of her relative family in the hamlet of Malik Rahmoo in Pakpattan on Sunday and Monday nights, an adolescent girl was allegedly gang-raped by thieves.
At the time of the occurrence, a resident of Bahawalnagar, his wife, their son, their little daughter, their sister, and their 17-year-old niece were visiting family friends in Pakpattan.
On Sunday at midday, the family drove off to Pakpattan. They first traveled to Mustaqeem Jhonka hamlet to express their sympathies for a family friend’s father’s passing. They thereafter went to see another family acquaintance in Pakpattan’s Mohalla Abdullah Shah.
Around eleven o’clock at night, the family got in their car and drove to Bahawalnagar. Their vehicle was stopped in the middle of a village road by four unidentified armed suspects riding two motorbikes as they were returning close to Malik Rahmoo village.
The dad was behind the wheel of the vehicle, his wife, daughter, sister, and adolescent niece seated in the backseat with their son in the passenger seat.
A family from Bahawalnagar was visiting Pakpattan when the tragedy occurred.
Initially, the suspects took their car keys and cell phones. After removing the women from the car, they stole money and gold jewelry from them.
About twenty minutes later, the man’s niece was taken by two armed suspects to the wayside maize fields, where they gang-raped her as their two accomplices held the family prisoner. The girl cried out for assistance, but her family was powerless to save her.
The 50-minute incident in the Saddar police area in Pakpattan included 35 minutes of gang rape and torture, yet no one was around to assist the family. While the girl cried out for assistance, neither her aunts nor uncle were able to come to her aid.
The family was robbed by the suspects of two cell phones, gold jewelry valued at Rs70,000, and Rs67,000.
The suspects abandoned the car keys on the road and ran away following the robbery and gang rape.
The family visited a neighboring property, the owner of which had dialed police emergency 15. After an hour, police arrived at the crime scene, inspected the area, and gathered evidence.
For a medical checkup, the victim girl was moved to the District Headquarters Hospital in Pakpattan.
The victim’s aunt, who lived in the Chowk Fidai Shah area of Bahawalnagar district and was also in the car, filed a complaint with Saddar Police, alleging that the four unnamed suspects had committed robbery and gang rape in violation of Section 391 and Section 375/A of the PPC.
Dawn was informed by District Police Officer Tariq Wallayat that the police had established three investigative teams comprising SP Investigation Shahida Noreen, the CIA, and a few undercover agents.
He stated that the girl had been sent home following counseling and that the police and teams from the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) had a significant lead in the case and that arrests will be made shortly.
Mahboob Rashid, a regional police officer, also went to the crime scene and spoke with the victims’ relatives. He told the family all the suspects would be arrested.
The Pakpattan incident brought to mind the 2020 motorway gang-rape incident in which two men, Abid Malhi and Shafqat Ali Bagga, broke into the car of a French woman with Pakistani descent when it ran out of gas near Lahore on the M-4. They then robbed the woman and gang-raped her in front of her children.
(Names have been omitted to preserve the rape victim’s and her family’s privacy.)
