Voice of Gender News From Pakistan
KARACHI: Sindh’s senior minister for education and literacy, Pir Mazharul Haq, announced that an annual stipend will be given to girls studying from grades one to five.
It is currently being paid to girls studying from grades six to eight. “We are paying them Rs2,600 per year,” said Haq. Besides this, 15,000 other students, who passed a written test set by the Syed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology are also being paid Rs1,500 per month.
PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday ordered conducting of polygraph tests of the alleged gang-rape victim Uzma Ayub and the accused charged in the rape case to find out the truth after all the DNA tests didn’t match with the accused persons, including the policemen and the two soldiers.
A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth had taken suo moto notice of the case of the alleged gang-rape of Uzma Ayub and murder of her brother Alamzeb.
Senior Superintendent of Police Investigation, Atiqullah Wazir informed the bench that DNA tests of none of the accused charged in the gang-rape case matched that of Uzma Ayub’s newborn baby girl.
The investigators produced the DNA result of the baby girl Zeba. The result showed that none of the accused including Zahid Iqbal, Atifullah, Imran, Juma Din, Jamal Anwar, Hakim Shah and Shakeel had fathered the infant.
However, the court directed the police investigation officer, Atiqullah Wazir, to carry out polygraph tests of both the victim and the accused at the Punjab Forensic Science Agency and submit the report on the next hearing as that was only option to know the truth about the alleged gang-rape of Uzma Ayub.
The polygraph test measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration and skin conductivity while the subject is asked a series of questions. The belief is that deceptive answers will produce physiological responses that can be differentiated from those associated with non-deceptive answers.
The investigation officer informed the bench that the rape victim did not change her statement against the accused persons even after their DNA result did not match with the baby girl. The bench asked him to expand the investigation and investigate others in case he suspected them of involvement in the case.
However, the court rejected the unconditional apology of Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police Hakim Shah, the principal accused in the rape case, in the contempt of court case in which he and his supporters were accused of addressing public meeting in court premises and pressurising the trial court in the case. The court directed his lawyer to submit reply in the contempt case within 10 days. The accused persons and Uzma Ayub appeared in the case.
After the murder of Uzma Ayub’s brother Alamzeb and life threats to other family members, the provincial government on the directives of the high court had shifted the family to the Civil Quarters locality in Peshawar on January 18.
Ayesha Shahid
ISLAMABAD: Protest by Lady Health Workers (LHWs) took a dramatic turn on Wednesday when some of them tried to set themselves on fire. One of them was even successful and received ten per cent burn injuries.
After hours of shouting, as the deadline of 3pm drew nearer, around 25 protesters including lady health workers account supervisors, and drivers – all from Sindh – sprinkled oil over themselves and got ready to light the matches.
At the moment, the waiting police came into action and a violent tussle with the protesters started where the police tried to rid them of the bottles of oil and matches.
Barkat Ali, one of the protesters managed to light himself on fire but the flames were quickly extinguished and an ambulance got him to Pims where he was stated to be out of danger.
But this is not the first time that the protesters have attempted self-immolation. In a previous protest in Lahore, the protesters tried a similar move, but then too, the timely intervention of police saved precious lives.
Lady Health Workers have been coming out for protests against non-payment of salaries and government’s failure to regularise their services for months all over the country and seem to have reached their limits. They demanded that 130,400 members of the LHW programme be regularised and their salaries paid.
On Tuesday, during their protest in Islamabad, they had given an ultimatum that if their demands were not met by 3pm on Wednesday, they would commit mass suicide.
As media gathered in front of the Press Club to see how things progress, people from the ministry of Human Rights made it to the protest and tried to convince the LHWs to come to the office of Adviser to the Prime Minister on Human Rights, Mustafa Nawaz Khokar, but the protesters rejected any such offers and demanded that Mr Khokar come and meet them directly.
“These are delaying tactics, government has been finding ways to delay our demands and we will not tolerate it,” commented one of them.
“We have been serving for over 18 years, but now we have no hopes of pensions or salaries and no future. We have even spent time in jail under charges of being terrorists. The women who help other women bear children are now being declared terrorists!” exclaimed Ms Bushra. The issue of the National Lady Health Worker programme had been controversial ever since devolution which made health a provincial subject. The fate of the programme was undecided too as provinces refused to claim them and the federal government abandoned them.
The issue of LHWs has been taken up by the Supreme Court, the Sindh assembly as well as the Prime Minister and various ministers on several occasions. But any moves made were temporary and nothing more than reconciliatory.
When asked that if LHW programme has been devolved, then why she expects the center to take responsibility, Bushra said for two years after devolution, the programme is supposed to be the center’s responsibility. The Prime Minister has also made statements in support of the programme until the next NFC award.
But, Ms Bushra points out: “The LHWs have been protesting for over four years, have not received salaries for months and suffered through every misery – now enough is enough.”
ISLAMABAD: The chief justice was in a hurry for once. In just the second hearing on Wednesday of a case related to the conversion of three Hindu women, a Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, wrapped up the case and announced its judgment.
The three young women present in the court were told to express their ‘true’ feelings about what they wanted to do and Sindh police were ordered to be their ‘protectors’ — ensure their safety and their happiness.
Police were asked to submit reports every fortnight about the wellbeing of the women.
The women did not utter a word during the proceedings. Later they were sent off to the registrar’s office to pour their hearts out.
In between, they were kept apart from their parents; they were taken to the registrar’s office from a different route so that no one would run into them.
The women recorded their statements before the registrar and decided to go with their husbands.
The judgment, however, did not go down well with the hapless parents. For the rest of the afternoon, the human tragedy that is the Hindu minority in Pakistan was played out on the steps of the Supreme Court building and outside as the families spoke to media and protested the verdict. Wednesday did not bring them the justice for which they had travelled from Sindh to Islamabad.
The women who appeared before the court under the watchful eyes of Sindh police were Rinkal Kumari, 19, (now known as Faryal Bibi) of Mirpur Mathelo, Dr Lata Kumari, 30, (Hafsa) of Jacobabad, and Aasha Devi, 19, (Haleema Bibi) of Jacobabad, who earlier was missing but surfaced voluntarily.
“We gave these girls sufficient time to think about their future and we will not force them. They are grown-up and are allowed to go wherever they want to go,” the chief justice observed. He said they were sui juris (one who has reached maturity and is no longer dependent) and, therefore, fully in a position to decide about the future.
“We feel they (the women) stayed in a pressure-free atmosphere at the Panah Shelter Home in Karachi where neither of the parties was allowed to meet them,” the court observed.
The order, however, generated instant commotion inside the courtroom, prompting the chief justice to ask the counsel for different parties to urge their clients to maintain discipline.
Frantic developments were seen soon after the announcement of the verdict. Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, patron of the Pakistan Hindu Council (PHC), called an emergent meeting to discuss implications of the verdict.
The PHC also filed a petition highlighting abduction of Hindu girls who were then forced to change their religion and married off to Muslim men. The court will take up the case after two weeks.
The disappointed parents of these women and members of the Hindu community, including parliamentarians from the ruling PPP, staged a sit-in outside the Supreme Court for some time and called for giving custody of the women to their parents.
“This is complete injustice in the name of Islam,” shouted Mohen, father of Aasha, outside the courtroom. He asked why the court did not take into consideration a demand by police for payment of Rs1.8 million for recovering the girl — a demand which was raised to Rs3.5 million and then to Rs5 million. “From where we will fetch this kind of money.”
He said the Hindu community was being forced to leave Pakistan.
The mothers of the three women kept weeping and wailing outside the Supreme Court and alleged that the court had never allowed the girls to meet their parents.
Ramesh Lal, a PPP MNA from Larkana, said minorities had lost all hopes in the country’s judiciary and today justice had been buried forever. “Why the judiciary, which never tires of taking suo motu notices against the president and the prime minister, is not taking notice about police demanding money from the victim families to recover the girls,” he asked.
Noor Naz Agha, the counsel for Rinkal, however, welcomed the verdict and said the court had rightly accepted that being adult, the girls had a right to live their lives according to their choice.
But she held the absence of legislation responsible for the rising number of complaints about forced conversions and marriages.
Mian Aslam, son of MNA Faqir Abdul Haq alias Mian Mitho, who was accused of abducting Rinkal, rejected the allegations, wondering “if we kidnapped her then why she was produced before the magistrate to record her will and later handed over to police”.
He brushed aside an impression that the girls were converted to Islam forcibly.