PESHAWAR: Humiliation of woman - case sent to lower court
By Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, Jan 4: An anti-terrorism court here has transferred the case of allegedly stripping a woman in public to the district and sessions judge.
The court presided over by Shahjee Rehman Khan observed that the case did not amount to terrorism as per the definition given in the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
The district and sessions judge, Hayat Ali Shah, on Tuesday marked the case to the additional district and sessions judge Ahmad Sultan Tareen for conducting trial. The FIR of the case was registered at police station Urmer on Feb 25, 2004. Three accused, including the prime suspect Niaz Bacha, have already been arrested, whereas the fourth accused Pervez Khan is absconding.
The incident had occurred at Urmer Payan, a village in the outskirts of the provincial capital on Feb 24. Initially, the complainant Talaj Bibi only alleged in the FIR that the accused beat her and tried to sexually assault her when she visited the residence of Niaz Bacha to wish his family on the birth of a daughter.
The FIR was registered under section 5, 6, 11 and 18 of the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979 read with section 354-A of Pakistan Penal Code.
Later on, the complainant's family claimed that she was stripped of her clothes and paraded naked in the streets of Ghazikhel, the locality in the village where Niaz Bacha resided.
On March 13, 2004, the complainant recorded her statement before the court of a judicial magistrate narrating the whole story. She claimed that in the presence of her mother and brothers she could not narrate the real story to the police at the time of lodging the FIR.
After her statement section 354-A of PPC was included in the FIR, which carries death penalty for the offence of striping a woman of clothes and exposing her to public view.
The prosecution claimed that the main accused Niaz Bacha believed that Muzzafar Khan, brother of the complainant, had sexually assaulted his wife when he was himself in Saudi Arabia in connection with his work. The accused Bacha has been denying that the incident had ever occurred.
