MUZAFFARABAD: Police in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s (AJK) lakeside city of Mirpur have arrested a son of a former chief justice of the AJK Supreme Court, allegedly for harassing a fresh medical graduate for the past two years, police sources confirmed on Wednesday.

An FIR was also registered under sections 489H, 489 ZXD, 501(2) of Penal Code and section 11 of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Act. The Mirpur police took the suspect into custody from a friend’s flat in the city, the sources saud.

The arrest of the suspect who is a BS-17 ad-hoc employee in the Information Technology section of the AJK high court was made at around midnight on an application filed by the victim’s father - an advocate belonging to Kotli district – at about 11:15pm on Tuesday.

According to the contents of the application, available with Dawn, the victim who studied medical education in Muzaffarabad from 2014 to 2019 used to live in a hostel that was owned by the suspect’s father.

The complainant alleged that in Dec 2018, his daughter noted that the suspect would covertly take pictures of female students from the roof of the hostel, which he would visit apparently to look after the building.

“After some time, my daughter started receiving calls and messages from different numbers by the suspect who would ask her to maintain relations with him,” he alleged, adding, on her refusal, the suspect started threatening her.

The complainant further said that his daughter completed her medical education in April 2020 and started a house job in Mirpur, but the suspect did not quit tormenting her.

The suspect was in Mirpur for the past few days but on Monday he arrived in the hospital and threatened my daughter in the presence of a senior doctor with death if she did not accompany him to contract marriage, the complainant said.

He said that the moment the senior doctor informed him about the incident he rushed from Kotli to lodge a complaint with the police.

This correspondent made several phone calls to DIG Mirpur Sardar Ilyas Khan and SSP Raja Irfan Salim but could not receive any response.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2020