March 18, 2004

The recent murder of two young girls in Karachi has led to a public outcry. How far will this go in bringing the perpetrators of this crime to justice? Is this enough consolation for the victims? Shahid Shah reports

In his theory on living species Darwin had proclaimed, “The fittest will survive.” This espeically holds true for the women and children who undergo violence at the hands of men.

Numerous crimes against women and children are reported on a daily basis. According to data compiled by the NGO Madadgar in Karachi, 841 children were sexually abused and murdered after the abuse in the country last year. The statistics from January 1 to March 5 this year are particularly shocking as they reveal that 117 children have been victims of acts of violence.

Madadgar, a project of LHRLA and the United Nations, collects data from 25 English, Urdu and Sindhi language newspapers on a daily basis. Rashid Ansari, media person and data base administrator at Madadgar, told TR that the reported crimes are 10 times less than the actual cases of abuse, as people from interior Sindh and Punjab hardly report these cases due to fear of the landlords.

Last year there were 585 cases in Punjab, 219 in Sindh, 22 in NWFP, and 15 in Balochistan. Fifty boys were gang-raped, two were murdered after the rapes, 241 boys were sexually assaulted, while another 20 were murdered after the incidents. Out of the girls, 312 were raped, 113 were sexually assaulted, three girls were raped after kidnapping, eight were killed after being raped, one was tortured after rape, and one was sexually harassed.

The report says that the highest number of cases wasin Karachi with 116 cases; there were s105 cases in Lahore, Peshawar had eight, Quetta had seven and in Islamabad the number was eight.

Seven girls were raped by their fathers and one was raped by her stepfather. A boy was murdered after being raped by his grandfather. Abusers included landlords, in-laws, a maulvi, a neighbour, a policeman, a stranger, a watchman, an employee, a relative, a dacoit, a doctor, a driver, an employer, a friend, a guardian, a principal, a teacher, a tailor and a barber. The location of the crimes included the abuser’s house, the open field, at school, at a victim’s house, in the park and at a clinic.

This year till March 5, 34 girls and 33 boys were raped; 20 girls and 13 boys were gang raped while 13 children were sexually harassed.

Ansari observed that crimes against children were increasing rapidly with every passing day. He said: “Cases of kidnappings are especially increasing. Children are kidnapped for the purpose of trafficking and camel racing and are often set free after rape. Some of them are killed in the fear that they may tell about the incident.” Another social worker observed that parents are reluctant to leave children outside their houses without the presence of adults.

Dr Ashiq Hussain, a retired army medical officer, told TR that sexually abused children do not live a normal life after they have been abused. He said: “These children go through severe stress throughout their remaining lives, most of them become psychiatric patients after such incidents, while female children rarely have good relations with their husbands.”

The recent case of Hajra Barejo, 8, and Sassi Barejo, 6 — who left their home in Memon village, Malir, Karachi, on February 20, to collect wood for their stove and never returned — has caused a huge public outrcy.

Three days after their disappearance, villagers realized something was amiss when they smelt a stench, ostensibly of the girls’ bodies. People learnt later that they had been tortured and burnt with acid, and then thrown into the bushes near the Gadap police station. Witnesses say that bottles of acid were present in the vicinity. Local people believe that the crime was committed by policemen as both girls went missing from in front of the Gadap police station’s gate. The initial postmortem report said that Sassi had a hole in her head. They were brutally tortured and raped.

The police were reluctant to file the case when the parents of the girls arrived at the police station. Then the local people surrounded the police station to get the FIR lodged against the police officials, but they refused to do so. The FIR was finally registered on the crowd’s insistence.

The elected representatives of the Pakistan People’s Party, Muttahida Quami Movement, activists of the Jeay Sindh Quami Mahaz, and other political parties gathered at the spot and demanded the arrest of the police officials who were guilty of this heinous crime.

So many cases of such crimes go unreported, but this time the efficiency of the press and the local people, succeeded in drawing the attention of the highest authorities of the country, as well as the province, towards the murders.

After a few weeks the policemen were arrested — earlier they had been suspended, and the chief minister had ordered a judicial inquiry. Bashir Barejo, father of Hajra, and Gulsher Barejo, father of Sassi, had earlier demanded that a judicial inquiry should be conducted, and they held the police personnel responsible for the murder of their daughters.

Mir Abbass Talpur, a city district government councillor and resident of Bin Qasim Town, Malir, told TR that no incident of this type had occurred in the village before, and the police were the culprits. He claimed that one of the accused men, the ASI of the Gadap police station, had come under the same allegation/indictment when he was in-charge of a picket in Jam village some time ago.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)