Day: February 15, 2012

Karachi: Two witnesses failed to identify a dreaded suspect nominated in several rape and robbery cases before a sessions court on Tuesday. Mohammad Ali Hajiano and Umair Khan have been charged with committing robberies and raping women within the remit of Gizri and Defence police stations in 2008-09.

Complainant Kamal’s wife and his daughter failed to identify the accused and deposed that they could not properly see the faces of the robbers due to darkness. They, however, supported the prosecution and pointed at Hajiano that he was the main suspect who used to rob people in the Defence area in his infamous white Toyota Corolla car.

Sessions Judge Javed Ahmed Kerio, who was conducting trial inside the Judicial Complex, adjourned the hearing till February 20. The accused were booked under sections 392 (punishment for robbery) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Source: The News

IN COLD BLOOD: 1 is the number of women killed in the name of honour in Islamabad last year.
ISLAMABAD:

A total of 8,539 cases of violence against women were reported in 2011, an increase of about seven per cent over 2010.

According to the fourth Annual Statistics of Violence against Women launched by the Aurat Foundation on Tuesday, certain forms of violence, such as sexual assault, acid throwing, honour killings and domestic violence have shown a notable increase in 2011.

Among the 8,539 cases, nearly one-fourth of the cases (2,089) are that of abduction/kidnapping, followed by murders, which constitute 18.45%.

Moreover, 8.25% of cases have been categorised as honour killings, which indicate that a total of 2,280 women were killed last year.

In Islamabad, a total of 148 incidents were reported in 2011, compared to 127 in 2010. These included 34 cases of murder and 27 abduction/kidnapping cases.

There were 21 cases of domestic violence, nine suicides, eight rape/gang-rape cases, five cases of sexual assault and two cases of acid throwing reported in 2011 from Islamabad.

These figures, however, are just the tip of the iceberg, as hundreds of cases still go unnoticed due to multiple reasons, said the reporter.

Another cause for concern is that most of the reported cases never made it to the police, which reflect a lack of confidence that people have in the law enforcement agencies.

Out of the 8,539 incidents, FIRs were registered in 6,745 cases whereas no FIR was registered in 911 cases, while there was no information available in 883 cases.

Addressing a press conference after the launch of the report, Rabia Hadi, the national coordinator of Aurat Foundation’s “Policy Data Monitor – Violence Against Women” programme, expressed grief over the increase in violence compared to last year.

She said the figures show that the incidence of violence has remained more or less in the same range over the past four years. This, she added, shows that the society has not witnessed any radical change in the way they treat women.

“This reflects a kind of a status quo, also indicating that neither the state nor the society is doing enough to curb uncivilised behaviour,” she remarked.

At the same time, she maintained that the rise in reported cases indicates an increase in awareness among women to raise their voices against evils of the society.

She called for immediate steps to be taken to control the rising cases of violence.

Source: The Express Tribune

M. Waqar Bhatti

Karachi: The discovery of five foetuses from a garbage dump in a city neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon sent shockwaves among locals of the area, who called the police and demanded strict action against those involved in this grizzly incident.

Initially, locals thought that these were either bodies of babies unwanted by their parents or foetuses aborted at a maternity clinic. SHO Mehmoodabad police station Rao Muqeem told The News that a local saw the foetuses in a garbage dump in Gali No 11 of Sector-E in Akhtar Colony and informed the police on helpline 15.

Police and rescuers from the Edhi Foundation reached the spot and shifted the unborn babies to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), where a board of directors, comprising senior doctors and a female gynecologist, examined the foetuses.

Investigators from the police and medical fraternity later said the five foetuses found in the garbage dump were all females. They had been fixed in a formaldehyde solution, which preserves human or animal form for a longer period of time.

Investigators believed that the foetuses belonged to some medical lab or teaching institute and had been disposed of improperly by the lower staff working at those places.

The recovery raised alarm among government functionaries. Sindh Health Minister Dr Sagheer Ahmed immediately constituted a committee to investigate the matter and made Special Secretary Health Dr Suresh Kumar the head of the team.

Pressure from authorities also caused the local police to spring to their feet. Mahmood police officials started raiding maternity homes and clinics in their area. Several doctors and paramedical staff were also rounded up to ascertain if the babies were aborted there and dumped by their staff.

At the same time, the team of doctors examining the feotuses found they were between three to nine months and were fixed in formaldehyde. As a result, the medical investigators were unable to determine when they were extracted from the wombs of their mothers.

This discovery relieved investigators and they told the media that this was not a criminal act, but perhaps these specimens of human foetuses were discarded from some biological lab or medical teaching institute. It was believed that the foetuses had been kept there for educational purposes.

Special Secretary Health Dr Suresh Kumar told The News that that this was not a criminal act as the foetuses were fixed in preservatives. This led him to believe that the foetuses were neither killed before or at birth nor aborted at a health facility in recent days.

However, he underlined that the disposal of such specimens or tissues came under the hospital and environmental laws of the country and therefore, the dumping of the feotuses was a criminal activity.

Police Surgeon Dr Hamid Padhiar also confirmed that doctors who examined them found that they were fixed in formalin and were thrown in the garbage dump by the careless staff of some lab or health facility.

Leading gynecologists in the city were not sure whether the babies were aborted or suffocated to death, but said their disposal was improper. They also pointed out that the electronic media highlighted the issue without going into proper details.

Dr Shershah Syed, a noted male gynecologist, told The News that pregnancies can be terminated to ensure the mother’s health and there was nothing illegal about such a practice. However, there was no such facility available at public hospitals and people go to untrained midwives for abortions.

“If the fetuses are 20 to 26 weeks old, there is nothing wrong with the abortion if it was carried out to save the mother’s life, but unfortunately, this facility is not available at our public sector hospitals,” he added.

Dr Shah said he was calling for abortion facilities at public hospitals so that they were no longer carried out by untrained people at places lacking basic health facilities.

Dr Samrina Hashmi, a Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) representative and gynecologist, observed that there was nothing illegal about abortions, but there should be a proper system under which pregnancies were terminated as 90 percent abortions were carried on married women.

“Married women go for abortions in Pakistan as a means of family planning as they are unaware of interventions available in the country,” she said. The gynecologist supported abortion facilities at public hospitals to save the lives of mothers.

Source: The News

ISLAMABAD: A man was arrested for trying to rape an 11-year-old girl in New Shakrial, police said on Tuesday.

The accused, a gardener in the Capital Development Authority, had escaped from his house after what the police said attempting to rape the girl. However, he was arrested from his father’s house and booked in a criminal case.

The accused will be produced in the court of law on Wednesday for obtaining his remand, the police added.

The girl’s father, a retired army official, while talking to Dawn said: “Thank to Allah my daughter remained safe but since the incident my whole family is in shock and distress.”

The police said the girl was going to the market along with her 18-month-old sister to purchase milk on Monday. On her way, one of the neighbours asked her to also bring milk for him. He took the girl inside his house on the pretext of giving her money for the
milk and tried to rape her.

However, the girl managed to escape leaving her younger sister behind.

The girl narrated the incident to her family who reached the house of the accused and found the little girl outside.

On the complaint of the girl’s father, the Shahzad Town police approached the medico-legal officer who after examining the victim at her house on Monday night declared that she had not been raped.

Source: Dawn