Lahore police informed a judicial magistrate on Wednesday that they had added sections related to rape in the first information report (FIR) registered against five suspects in the abduction case of four girls of Hanjarwal.

In an application submitted to Judicial Magistrate Ayyaz Rafique Lone, police said they suspected that one of the girls had been subjected to rape. Therefore, sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 377 (punishment for unnatural offences) of the Pakistan Penal Code were added to the FIR, they said.

The investigating officer requested the magistrate for an extension in the suspects' physical remand so their DNA tests could be conducted in order to complete the investigation. In his order, the magistrate said the police's request was "plausible" and extended the physical remand of the five suspects for three days.

He directed police to produce the suspects again on August 14.

The four girls, aged between eight and 14, had gone missing in Lahore on July 30. An FIR was subsequently registered on the complaint of the father of two of the girls.

Complainant Irfan Ali of Mohalla Nambardaran had stated in the FIR that his daughters — aged 10 and 11 — along with the daughters of his neighbour Akram — aged 14 and eight — might have been kidnapped by some unknown persons.

A joint team of Sahiwal district police and the Crime Investigation Agency had recovered the girls in a raid on a house in Sahiwal on Aug 4 and arrested the suspects — Qasim Ali, Shahzad and his wife, Naeem Shahzad, Asif and his wife, and Shaukat Ali.

On Friday, the magistrate had allowed the recovered girls to go with their families.

Interrogation report

An interrogation report submitted to a district court in Lahore earlier this month stated that one of the suspects, Qasim, had allegedly kidnapped the girls from Lahore and brought them to Sahiwal where they were received by Naeem Shahzad.

Naeem Shahzad used to teach dancing to girls and sent them to dance parties, according to the report.

Another suspect, Shahzad, was involved in prostitution along with his wife and already had a case registered against him for the crime in Sahiwal, the report said. It added that he owned one house in Lahore and three in Sahiwal.

The report said that the wife of another suspect, Asif, ran her own beauty parlour and was also engaged in prostitution, providing the services of girls through the parlour.

The court had remanded the five men to police custody and sent the two women to jail on judicial remand for 14 days.