SHIKARPUR, March 14: The activists of the Pirbhat Women’s Development Society took out a procession here on Wednesday to protest against gang- rape of a teenaged girl, Saira Chandio.

Led by Rubina Chandio, Zarqa Lashari and others, the participants, after marching on different roads of the city, reached outside the press club where they staged a demonstration.

The protesters called upon the Sindh chief minister and police chiefs of Sindh, Sukkur region and Shikarpur district to transfer the case to an anti-terrorism court to ensure that the culprits, including a policeman, were awarded exemplary punishment.

Fourteen-year old Saira, a class IX student, was kidnapped at gun point by two men from her house in Khanchandabad area of Shikarpur city where she lives with her mother and sister as his labourer father lives with his second wife.

According to Saira, her kidnappers, Jamadar Ghulam Farid Sanjrani of the New Fojdari police station and his friend Aziz Mahar, took her to an empty house in Juma Village on the Rustum road where both repeatedly subjected her to rape for the whole night. In the morning, they made her sit on a Shikarpur-bound wagon and she returned home in semi-unconscious condition.

She has lodged a complaint against the accused with the New Fojdari police under different sections, some pertaining to the Women’s Protection Act.

Policeman Sanjrani has been arrested and lodged at the police station he had been working for after police obtained his seven-day remand. Mahar, the second accused, is still at large.

Source: Dawn

Date:3/15/2007