HARIPUR: Two young men allegedly assaulted a minor girl in the room of a mosque in Hattar village, police said here on Saturday.

One of the accused has been arrested while the other is on the run, police said.

A woman, resident of Hattar village, told police that her daughter aged 10 had been a regular student of a prayer leader of a local mosque for last several months.

On Friday, she said her daughter went to learn Holy Quran from the mosque’s prayer leader who asked her to go to his room inside the mosque for washing kitchen utensils.

According to the complainant, two accused namely Waqas and Qamar Abbas sexually assaulted her daughter in the room.

She told the police that the same accused had assaulted her daughter in the same room on June 4 but forced the minor girl to keep silent, threatening her of slitting her throat with a knife.

On the complaint of the victim’s mother, the police registered an FIR against the two accused under section 376/34 of the PPC after the medical report confirmed the offence.

The police claimed to have arrested Waqas, but Abbas was still at large. The arrested accused was produced before the judicial magistrate on Saturday, who granted the police his one-day physical remand for further investigation into the case.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2019