RAWALPINDI: A man arrested by police for allegedly sexually assaulting children is also suspected of kidnapping and assaulting two more victims, a tea vendor and a labourer, who he allegedly kidnapped, drugged and assaulted at his home in Bahria Town.

Separate FIRs in both cases were lodged against the suspect on Thursday. He has already been arrested in another case and was remanded into police custody for five days on Wednesday.

In the police’s preliminary investigation into the first case, the suspect confessed to sexually assaulting 30 children in Pakistan. The investigation also found that he had been deported from Italy and the United Kingdom after being imprisoned for child sexual abuse.

Two more cases have now come to light after the police offered to help each of the man’s victims and said that if they do not want to become complaints in the FIRs the police will do so instead.

On Thursday, a relative of an 11-year-old boy told Rawat police that the child, a tea vendor in Bahria Town Phase VIII, had been missing for two and a half months.

The man told Dawn that ever since the child disappeared, he and other family members had been searching for him in the Khanna area. He said that when the child was released, he told them he was drugged and assaulted by the suspect for two months.

He said in the FIR that he thought the child may have been abducted by the suspect, since he has been accused of kidnapping and assaulting children in another case.

The victim was interviewed by the police after the FIR was registered.

So far, three FIRs have been registered with the Rawat police against the suspect.

A labourer told police that he was at a petrol station in Bahria Town when a motorist, who was later identified as the suspect, offered him a job at his residence. He said he was made to sit in his case and was drugged and taken to the suspect’s house, where he was sexually abused.

An FIR was registered after a medical examination of the victim.

Police said DNA samples will be sent to the laboratory on Friday. They said the relatives of the victims must be assured regarding their protection and cases must be registered on their complaints. If parents are not willing to submit complaints due to social pressure, the police must adopt a legal process to register the case on their own complaint.

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2019