Lahore Motorway rape incident.
On the night of Wednesday, 9th September 2020 on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway, took place a horrific gang-rape of a woman in front of her children. The country boiled with anger as the details of the gang-rape emerged the news on Thursday.
The victim was accompanied by her three children when their car stalled in the Gujjarpura neighborhood, where Motorway Police is not deployed, as it ran out of fuel. She called her relative and sent him her location on the motorway. When the relative managed to reach the motorway, he saw her terror-stricken and bloodstains on her clothes. He saw her vehicle windowpanes had also been broke.
The two armed men attacked her; one struck the car with clubs, and the other held them hostage at gunpoint, the woman reported to the police. The attackers took the woman and her children to a forested area nearby and gang-raped her. The woman was later robbed of Rs100,000 cash, gold jewelry pieces, a bracelet, her car registration card, and three ATM cards.
The newly appointed CCPO, Umar Sheikh, who is assigned to investigate the case, managed to add fuel to the fire by questioning the choices of the woman.
"What surprises me is that, being a mother of three (young) children and the only driver (unaccompanied by an adult male), why would she not take the GT Road that has a population around it? If nothing else, she should have checked her fuel...,"
Umar Sheikh, the CCPO told in an audio interview on 10th September 2020 on Dunya News, a local news channel. Various groups criticized the statement of the CCPO, especially opposition leaders and netizens, demanding his resignation.
Upon the alarm of the case, police and forensics rushed to the scene. The woman's initial medical reports prove that she was raped. The flagrant victim-blaming also evoked a response from the country's Human Rights Minister.
In a statement, Punjab police chief Inam Ghani confirmed that 12 suspects had been taken into custody so far.
The Lahore motorway incident is one of the many reminders of the deceitful nature of our society; another reminder of the predators who display sheer savagery and are present in our alleyways and highways. They have left no place safe for anyone, anywhere. This atrocious incident has set off a debate on social media on the disturbing rise in the cases of sexual abuse in the country. People are shaming the law implementation, which is unable to provide security to the citizens.
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