HARIPUR: The police on Friday arrested a man for sexually assaulting his teenage female cousin in a Khanpur area and said the suspect would be produced in a local court to obtain physical remand.

A police official said the girl from Achalar Khoi Maira village claimed that Sufiyan had sexually assaulted her when she was home alone on Thursday afternoon.

He said the suspect reportedly entered the girl’s house after scaling the boundary wall and injured her by knife before assaulting her.

The official said the girl’s medical examination at the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Khanpur confirmed assault. He said the police had booked the suspect under Pakistan Penal Code sections 376 and 324.

Later in the day, district police officer Syed Khalid Hamdani produced the suspect in a news conference.

The suspect confessed to assaulting his cousin.

The DPO said the suspect, who fled after the incident, was held by the police after raids at his hideouts.

He said he had formed a special team of senior police investigators led by Haripur SP (investigation) Shamsur Rehman to probe the matter along modern lines.

During the last seven days, two incidents of violence against young people were reported in Haripur.

On Jan 28, a schoolboy had accused three men, including a police official, of molesting and filming him, while on 29th, a teenage girl was allegedly kidnapped at gun point.

Suspects in the student assault case are currently in the Haripur Central Jail on judicial remand.

However, the girl denied she was kidnapped. Appearing before a local court, she produced her nikah nama (marriage papers) claiming she had married Malik Shiraz, one of the eight suspected kidnappers, on her own free will.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2018