The maze to justice

Another case is set to be lost as a ‘tragedy’. But the real misfortune is simply playing itself out yet again; a victim of rape may be well on her way to becoming a ‘disgraced’ statistic. Investigations are also unlikely to run their course, as merely two days after it was reported, the crime stands eclipsed by motives of self promotion and politics.

A newly wed, 18-year old woman from Lodhran in Punjab was raped at the mausoleum of Pakistan’s founder. She went missing on March 15 while on a sightseeing visit to the tomb accompanied by her husband and some 20 relatives. The family had arrived in the metropolis after a visit to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine in Sindh and on its return from Abdullah Shah Ghazi, decided to make a stopover at the Quaid’s mausoleum. The young woman, abducted at gunpoint by two men while she was waiting for her relatives at the gate of the mausoleum, claims that her kidnappers, who were later joined by others, raped her for 36 hours. She was recovered two days later by personnel on guard duty at the mausoleum and has alleged that she was gang-raped by five employees of the mausoleum. The Superintendent of Police, Niaz Khoso, agrees that the rape took place in a storage room in the museum. The police say that they recovered pieces of stained clothing and hair from the site of the crime. Meanwhile, doctors who conducted her medical examination say that she was under the influence of what they suspect were opiates.

On Tuesday, the victim is said to have identified the accused at the office of the resident engineer in charge of workers at the mausoleum. However, the entire picture has now taken an ugly turn as the case seems caught amid a crossfire between the police, WAR, PPP representatives and her own family. On one end, her husband has accused the police of shielding her violator, a claim supported by the fact that the accused was initially released as he is said to enjoy the blessings of a minister. But the accused was later arrested and remanded into police custody by a judicial magistrate.

PPP’s Shehla Raza opened another front by jumping into the fray with accusations against WAR of having abducted the victim for personal glory. WAR, on the other hand, asserts that it was attacked ‘by many members of a religious alliance who surrounded the vehicle and physically assaulted lawyers and a social worker’. Police now claim that the victim has gone to stay with some relatives in the outskirts of the city until medico-legal reports are made available.

Ironically, the crescendo of what is an unsavoury war for publicity, has drowned the voices of the wounded and this case has begun to reek of the same fate as that of the murder of the newly wed NED couple. The victim may be alive but is not very far from being overwhelmed into silence. She, essentially a victim of a moth-eaten system, faces a lonely, losing battle largely due to the absence of a strengthened medico-legal structure, an independent forensics department and a committed, amply compensated police force. Justice, therefore, awaits another quiet burial.