KARACHI, Sept 19: Within the span of less than one month two gang-rape cases involving policemen have come to light in the city.

The two cases involving policemen took place in August and September in Gizri and Mehmoodabad. None of the suspects have been brought to book nor any effort has been made to apprehended them.

On a Sunday night in mid-August, a mother of two was found with acid burns outside her residence in Neelam Colony, Clifton, crying for help.

She was taken to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) by her husband, where she was provided treatment.

But as the woman had received burns due to acid throwing, she was referred to the burns ward of Civil Hospital.

Medical examination of the woman at the JPMC, sources at the JPMC said, established that she had been raped. She was, however, admitted to the burns ward of Civil Hospital for the treatment of her burns.

According to her husband, his wife, mother of two children, used to visit a Pir Baba in Gizri for tawiz (talisman).

Narrating her ordeal before her husband and employers where the couple worked as domestic servants, the victim woman said at the Pir Baba’s house she was given a cup of tea. After drinking the tea, she fell unconscious.

The woman’s husband said she was abducted by three policemen who took her to Punjab. They kept her somewhere in Mian Chunnu and raped her repeatedly. They kept her there for more than a week and later brought her back to Karachi and warned her with dire consequences if she contacted police, the husband said.

However, as she did not appear to heed their warnings, they threw acid on her body and dumped her in front of her house.

In a similar incident, on the night of Sept 9 four men posing themselves as policemen came to a house in Kashmir Colony in the police limits of Mehmoodabad.

The four armed men, who were later identified as Naeem, Faheem, Jabbar and Zaman, all belonging to police, kidnapped a young girl who lived with her mother in the rented house in Kashmir Colony. They took her in a car to a house in Defence.

The four policemen raped the girl and later dumped her near Golden Towers in Defence.

When residents of Kashmir Colony came to know of the incident, they protested against it at Mehmoodabad police station. They demanded the arrest of the four policemen who kidnapped the young girl in the area and gang-raped her.

It was only after the area councillor intervened in the matter that police registered an FIR against the four suspects, who are still absconding.

On April 1, two sisters were raped in their Ramaswami house in front of their father and brother by five men, including four policemen. Later, police arrested Ismatullah, a constable posted at Saddar Town, Malik Safeer, a dismissed policeman, Mohammed Kashif, a laundry shopowner, and Malik Qamar Iqbal, a constable of the CIA Saddar, for raping the two sisters.

However, their accomplice and the mastermind of the incident, Malik Hasnat son of inspector Malik Ghulam Shabbir Awan, is still at large.

The gang of five had barged into the flat in Ramaswami, held the occupants hostage at gunpoint, and trussed up the father of the two sisters and their brother. The intruders outraged the modesty of the two sisters - one a 19-year- old maid and the other a 22-year-old divorcee — in front of their father and brother.

Police, who first refused to register the case on the complaint of the women’s father, later arrested Malik Safeer, Mohammad Kashif, and Ismatullah.

A rape victim, who does not have effective backing, finds it difficult to get justice. For instance, a married woman who was kidnapped at her house, and raped by a sub-inspector of police at a nearby police kiosk in Korangi, faced severe harassment when she approached a court of law to seek justice.

The woman had shifted to her parents’ home after she had misunderstandings with her husband a few days ago.

SI Zakaullah Niazi, posted at Korangi, entered the house forcibly in Zaman Town area of Korangi in mid-February 1999 and kidnapped the woman. He put the woman and a relation of hers, Haneef, who came to see her, in a van and drove to the police post where the woman was repeatedly raped. She was later let off.

The rape victim’s husband did not turn up. Her mother filed an application with a court to seek justice. Police allegedly harassed the mother and daughter and they were forced to retract the statement before the court.

The policeman tried to seek a medical certificate to declare him impotent with the intention of proving the woman as “prostitute” before the court. When the rape victim and her mother refused to bow in the face of alleged police harassment, they were forcibly shifted to another province. So in the absence of the complainant the court case went into pending and the case file stands almost closed.

At its recently concluded two-day Council meeting in Karachi, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted that there is a marked increase in incidents of violence against women.

A series of cases in recent past had reinforced the demand for repeal of Hudood laws and a critical review of the laws applicable to murder and hurt to human body, the HRCP was of the view.