An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Lahore acquitted 12 men in one of the 29 cases registered in the Kasur child sex abuse scandal that surfaced in 2015, DawnNews reported on Saturday.
Judge Chaudhry Ilyas acquitted the men of “sexual abuse of a young boy and making a video to blackmail his family,” a court official told AFP.
Prosecutors produced 16 witnesses against the accused men, but could not prove the charges, the official said. Another court official confirmed the details.
The men were subsequently released due to a "lack of evidence".
In the village of Hussain Khanwala in Kasur, videos were made of at least 280 children being sexually abused by a gang who blackmailed their parents by threatening to leak the videos and receiving money from them.
The police, who had conspicuously failed to act despite pleas from some parents, eventually made dozens of arrests after clashes between relatives and authorities brought the issue into the media spotlight.
In March 2016, the Senate also passed a bill that criminalised sexual assault against minors, child pornography and trafficking for the first time — previously only the acts of rape and sodomy were punishable by law.
Police had registered a total of 34 cases regarding the Kasur child abuse scandal. However, a joint investigation team had dismissed five cases as fake. So far, the ATC has announced its verdict in 24 cases.
Last year, ATC courts had acquitted 11 people that had been nominated in separate cases of the scandal, with four being released in August and seven in September.
Earlier this month, an ATC had awarded life sentence to three people that were nominated in one of the cases regarding the scandal. The three convicts were also slapped with a fine of Rs500,000 each.
Kasur has been in the limelight for recurring cases of child abuse in the area. Earlier this month, an ATC had awarded death sentence to the rapist and murderer of six-year-old Zainab in a high profile case that had sparked anger across the country with #JusticeForZainab becoming a rallying cry for an end to violence against children.
Zainab's body had been recovered from a trash heap on January 9, five days after she went missing. A forensic examination of her corpse had proven that she had been assaulted before being strangled to death.
