RAWALPINDI: Despite the passage of the ‘Zainab Alert Bill’ by the parliament in the wake of growing number of rape and gang rape cases of young girls to protect them from brutal crime, two persons gang raped a girl, aged 12 years and 8 months, according to Nadra records, a few days back in the jurisdiction of the Rawat Police Station of Rawalpindi.

Both were arrested and identified and a case has been registered.But unfortunately some influential persons have become active to muzzle the case and some Rawalpindi Police officials clearly appeared under pressure as they are tongue tied and not ready to come up with any clear statement despite repeated attempts to reach them for their comments.

However, the Regional Police Officer (RPO), Rawalpindi, Sohail Habib Tajak, said that the age of the victim had already been confirmed through multiple sources, including the Nadra records, the passport of the victim as well as the ‘Residence Permit’ issued by the Dubai government.

“She is actually 12 years and 8 months old,” the RPO Rawalpindi confirmed.RPO Habib Tajik said that the victim and her family had already been provided police security because the culprits were seen hurling abuses and serious threats to the victim and her family openly.

“The two Investigation Officers of Rawat Police Station have been suspended and the case has been transferred to ASP Ms Benish under the supervision of SSP (Investigation) Mr Faisal for further investigations,” the RPO Rawalpindi said.To another question, RPO Tajik said that this case cannot be registered under the ‘Zainab Alert Bill’ because the Ordinance is applicable only to the ICT limits.

The legal and human rights experts, when contacted, expressed their shock and dismay over the fact that the ‘Zainab Alert Bill’ is applicable only in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) limits and nowhere else in the country.

“This is absolutely ridiculous because ‘Zainab Alert Bill’ was enacted in the wake of the horrendous rape and murder case of Zainab in Kasur and was meant to protect girl children all over the country,” a human rights activist said.

It was learnt that the father of the girl has died and she, along with her mother, recently returned from Dubai in the wake of COVID-19 situation and were living in Phase-VIII of Bahria Town in Rawalpindi.

The woman lawyer representing the victim in the case has been pressing for taking up the trial under the recently-enacted ‘Zainab Alert Bill’ but some quarters are trying hard to create ambiguities about the age of the girl.

On the other hand, the police are dragging its feet in investigations, which the lawyer feared, will eventually make the things murky and the culprits will certainly take the maximum benefit of doubt from botched-up investigations and obusfication of facts in the case.The lawyer of the victim has demanded to immediately conduct the medical test of the girl child victim of this horrifying brutality to ascertain her age and also demanded of the authorities to put the victim in the custody of ‘Child Protection Bureau’.

Meanwhile, it is feared that some highly influential individual(s) in the PTI government are already busy either in striking a deal or reaching an agreement with the victim’s family with thinly-veiled threats of ‘dire consequences’ if the family did not take back the charges.

Newspaper: The News