Motorway rape case – Pakistan Gender News

March 26, 2021March 26, 2021

Convicts file appeals against sentence

LAHORE – The Motorway gang-rape convicts on Thursday filed appeals in the Lahore High Court (LHC) challenging their convictions by an Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC).

The convicts, Abid Malhi and Shafqat Ali, had impleaded state and complainant of case while filing their appeals under Section 25 of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.

They had submitted that the Trial Court handed down sentence against the case facts and law. The convicts submitted that they were not nominated in FIR whereas their appearance described in FIR by the complainant and victim also did not match with them.

They submitted that the incident took place at 3am and it was a dark night occurrence, but the prosecution failed to prove the source of light, adding that how the identification of the convicts could be proved.

While raising questions on case investigation, they submitted that the identification parade was held after a delay of 22 days whereas it was also not in accordance with rules and orders of the high court.

They further submitted that prosecution witness, a passerby, Khalid Masood, had not identified them before the area magistrate nor before the trial court which creates serious dent in the prosecution case.

They pleaded with the court to allow their appeals and set aside the impugned convictions by the trial court.

It is pertinent to mention here that an ATC had on March 20 handed down death sentence, life imprisonment, and 14 years imprisonment to the convicts on proving charges of rape, robbery, mischief and kidnapping.

On September 9, 2020, the convicts – Abid Malhi and Shafqat Ali, raped a woman at gunpoint in Gujjarpura area while she was waiting for help on the Motorway after her car ran out of fuel.

An FIR of the incident was lodged with the Gujjarpura police under various Sections of the Pakistan Penal Code and the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).

Newspaper: The Nation , Dawn

March 22, 2021March 22, 2021

Death for the rapists!

To the gallows they shall go. Out comes the judgment against the beasts that raped a woman, weak and vulnerable, in front of her two little children, dumbstruck at the ordeal their defencelsss mother had to go through in the dead of the night on the motorway near Lahore. Abid Malhi and Shafqat Ali were sentenced to death, over the last weekend by a trial court, for sexually-assaulting the woman, a Pakistan-origin French national, on September 9, 2020. Judge Arshad Hussain Bhutta of the anti-terrorism court, also handed down life imprisonment and a fine of Rs50, 000 to each of the two brutes for related offences of abduction and robbery, respectively.

The conviction, coming within six months of the callous crime being committed, meets the expectations of all right-thinking people. But for a judge to deal with a rape case in a society as conservative and as confused as ours is not so simple, especially when it comes to deciding the case on the basis of forensic and circumstantial evidence ie with no eyewitnesses to testify in favour of the victim. Yes, the kind of pain and anger the horrific crime had evoked within the country and the embarrassment it had caused outside must have helped towards the case closure. But it is the capital punishment awarded to the two rapists that is significant, as it changes the way the judiciary has been dealing with cases involving rapes thus far. A bold deviation from the past, indeed!

The punishment with death – in what is now notorious as ‘motorway gangrape case’ – does set a very welcome precedent so very badly needed to fight violence and abuse against women that seem to be assuming epidemic proportions in our patriarchal society. The court judgment promises to encourage women to step out and report their sufferings at the hands of the opposite sex. To quote a few somber statistics, as many as 11 women are subjected to rape across the country on a daily basis. Of them only 41 per cent approach the police to register a case; and only 18 per cent of such cases reach the prosecution stage while the rate of conviction is shamefully low at 0.3 per cent, with death penalty nearly non-existent. No wonder Pakistan has, for years and years, been among the top five or six dangerous countries of the world for women to be in, according to multiple surveys.

While death for the rapists is welcome, the rape must also die. What’s needed towards this end is to adopt a multi-dimensional approach. Such an approach involves: 1) bringing legislation to do away with the obstacles that discourage women from putting their sufferings on record; 2) carrying out a radical overhaul of the criminal justice system to ensure that the culprits are nabbed and punished, besides focusing on sensitising police, prosecutors, magistrates, judges and medico-legal staff to issues concerning women; 3) devising special programmes for women empowerment; 4) creating enabling environment for women at educational institutions, workplaces and other areas; and 5) taking steps to bring about change in societal mindset, like using curriculum to educate students from the very beginning on the respect that the fair sex deserves, carrying out awareness campaigns through media on the to-dos for women in case of an untoward happening, etc.

The motorway gangrape case must jolt us all into meaningful action aimed at taking our country among the world’s best for women to be in.

Newspaper: Express Tribune (Editorial)

March 21, 2021March 22, 2021

Motorway rape convicts sentenced to death

LAHORE: An anti-terrorism court on Saturday awarded death sentence to two convicts — Abid Ali Malhi and Shafqat Ali alias Bagga — in the motorway gang-rape case under Section 376 (ii) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

The guilty verdict announced by Judge Arshad Hussain Bhutta in a hearing held inside the Camp Jail also carried life imprisonment for each convict under Section 365-A of the PPC (kidnapping for extorting property, valuable security). Each of the convicts was also handed down 14-year rigorous imprisonment, with a fine of Rs200,000 under Section 392 (robbery), and five-year rigorous imprisonment under Section 440 (mischief committed after preparation made for causing death or hurt), with a fine of Rs50,000.

The judge further imposed Daman (compensation) of Rs50, 000 on two counts on each of the convicts under sections 337 F1 and L2 to be paid to the rape survivor.

Earlier, the accused were produced in the court barefooted to hear the verdict, where the jail superintendent and the prosecution team was also present. The judge handed over their custody to the jail superintendent for their execution after the confirmation of death penalty by the Lahore High Court.

DIG investigation Shariq Jamal Khan congratulated the prosecution team on the conviction of the accused, because of submission of a comprehensive challan (investigation report) by the police in the case.

The government had constituted a special prosecution team, comprising Waqar Abid, Hafiz Asghar and Abdul Jabbar, for the case that was highlighted by the local and international media.

The trial court resumed the formal proceedings on Feb 22, 2021 after the police submitted the challan with a considerable delay. The investigation officer was issued a show cause notice by the court for the delay.

The rape survivor had identified the convicts during the investigation and before the trial court as well.

The prosecution had also produced the children of the rape survivor for recording their statements. However, the court after introductory inquiries declared them incompetent witnesses for being minors.

As per the police report, the accused had confessed to have committed the crime during the investigation. However, they denied the allegations before the court and opted for contesting the trial.

Gujjarpura police had registered the FIR on Sept 9, 2020 under sections 365-A, 392, 376 (ii), 427, 201, 34, 337-L2, 337-F1 of the PPC and Section 7 of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.

Initially, the police had arrested Shafqat, while prime suspect Malhi was held after over a month of the incident.

The then capital city police officer of Lahore Umar Sheikh had faced criticism from public and the media for his insensitive statement about the gang-rape survivor in which he criticised her for not checking the car fuel before taking the motorway and travelling late in the night on the less-frequented highway.

He had to tender public apology amid demand for his removal from the post for blaming the victim. However, Mr Sheikh remained in the office till his transfer on Jan 1, 2021.

The convicts had sexually assaulted a French woman of Pakistan-origin in front of her three children after dragging her out of her car that ran short of fuel and stopped during her late night travel on Sialkot-Lahore Motorway.

The prosecution presented 53 witnesses, including the rape survivor, the complainant of the FIR and the person who reported the incident on police emergency helpline. The scientific evidence included the DNA reports and fingerprints of the suspects.

The police had recovered a pistol and a club, used in the crime, from the convicts, besides their mobile phones.

The investigation report said the police traced the suspects with the help of record of their DNA samples, maintained by the Punjab Forensic Science Agency, which matched with the blood stains found on the crime scene.

Newspaper: Dawn , The News, Express Tribune , Business Recorder