Islamabad police registered a first information report (FIR) on Friday of the alleged rape of a woman at one of the hiking trails of the capital’s Margalla Hills.
The FIR was registered on the complaint of the rape survivor under Section 376 (punishment for rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code at Islamabad’s Kohsar police station in the early hours of the morning.
According to the FIR, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the complainant, a resident of Muridke, had been looking for a job and received a message on WhatsApp from a person around two months ago.
“He told me he was an accountant in the education department, where some vacancies were available,” the FIR quoted the complainant as saying, adding that the man told her he could get her a job there.
In return, the complainant said, he asked for Rs50,000.
She told police that the suspect also asked her to come to Rawalpindi and she reached there on Wednesday (July 12).
The same day, she said, he asked her to share her location with him, following which they met at the last bus stop of Tench Bhatta, a neighbourhood in Rawalpindi.
“There, I gave him my curriculum vitae and Rs30,000,” she said, adding that the remaining Rs20,000 were to be paid after she would receive the “written order of the employment”.
Moreover, she continued, “he told me that I will have to meet a senior officer who will be interviewing job applicants.
“He told me that after meeting me, the officer would get familiar with me and select me for the available post without any objection.”
For this purpose, she said, the suspect picked her up from the last bus stop of Tench Bhatta and took her to Margalla Hills’ trail 3 — an old hiking track that starts from Margalla Road in F-6 and leads to Viewpoint — on Thursday (July 13) on a motorcycle.
“He then took me to the jungle and raped me at gunpoint around 3pm”, she added.
She further stated that the suspect threatened to kill her if she made any noise. “So I remained silent out of fear.”
The complaint said the suspect later dropped her at the last bus stop of Tench Bhatta after threatening her again.
She sought “strict” legal action against the suspect and asked police to get her medical checkup done.
According to the FIR, she was sent to Polyclinic along with a lady constable for a medical checkup.
The case is a grim reminder of a similar incident that took place in Islamabad’s F-9 Park, where a woman was raped at gunpoint in February.
In the FIR of the February case, the complainant said she had gone to the park along with a male colleague when two men stopped them at gunpoint and took them towards a jungle. She said the men beat her up, raped her and told her to “not come to the park at this time”.
The brazen attack in a park in the capital had shocked the nation and renewed questions over the safety of women in the country.
Days later, police said two men were killed during an encounter at D-12 police picket in Islamabad and identified them as suspects in the F-9 park rape case.
