THATTA: The Sindh High Court on Thursday took suo motu notice of the alleged gang rape of a young boy in Darro town of Sujawal district some time ago after his father’s appeal for justice appeared in the media.

A senior Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) activist was booked along with his three associates at Darro police station earlier in the day. He and two of his associates were arrested.

The boy’s father had on Wednesday narrated to the local journalist the ordeal of his school-going son and the trauma the entire family was going through following the alleged gang rape of the boy by the suspects.

The activist, said to be a senior office-bearer of PPP’s taluka set-up and son of an influential political figure of the area, and two other suspects, employees of the health department, were arrested while a hunt was on for the fourth one — a reporter of a Sindhi daily.

The man accused the suspects of having extorted the family and not stopping the blackmail even after the family moved to Hyderabad to escape disrespect in society. He lamented that the suspects uploaded the explicit video of the gang rape on the social media when they [the family] found it impossible to pay the extortion money anymore.

The SHC chief justice has asked the Hyderabad DIG and Sujawal SSP to appear before him on Saturday (April 7) along with a report about progress of the investigation.

Meanwhile, the main suspect’s father held a press conference at his residence on Thursday to reject the complainant’s allegations against his son. He claimed that anti-PPP forces of the area were behind the propaganda to malign him and his son. He demanded a judicial inquiry into the allegations.

The Sindhi daily published a public notice in its Thursday issue announcing the sacking of the reporter and the Sujawal district health officer (DHO) suspended the two employees nominated in the FIR and issued show-cause notices to them. He also ordered a departmental inquiry against them.

According to the complainant, his son was gang raped at gunpoint and filmed by the political activist and his two friends who had kidnapped and taken him to their autaq.

He said the tormentors started blackmailing the family and demanding money. The poor family met their demands once or twice but could not afford to keep up with the increasing demands, so they left their ancestral town and shifted to Hyderabad. But the threats and blackmailing did not stop. When they stopped payment, the blackmailers uploaded the video on the social media, he said.

The man said that his son had been in trauma since the incident and the entire family was disturbed due to the blackmail and threats.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2018