Police on Monday arrested three suspects who allegedly gang-raped a woman last week in the Bakot area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Abbottabad district, springing into action after the incident sparked social media outrage.

Abbottabad police spokesperson Azam Mir Afzal told Dawn.com that the suspects had allegedly gang-raped a woman from Rawalpindi on Wednesday.

“District Police Officer (DPO) Umar Tufail took action and ordered the immediate arrest of the suspects after the incident was highlighted on social media, including Facebook and TikTok,” Spokesperson Afzal said.

He added that the Bakot station house officer (SHO), Arshad Khan, was sent to the village, where he had also found the local community angered over the incident.

On the SHO’s complaint, a first information report (FIR) was lodged at the Bakot police station yesterday under sections 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 375A (rape) and 376 (punishment for rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

According to the FIR, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, police arrested the suspect who owned the house where the woman was allegedly raped by him and his friends.

The FIR added that one of the suspects brought the woman to his friend’s house in his car from Rawalpindi, where he and his friends raped her, one after the other. In his statement, the homeowner confessed to committing the crime while also identifying his two accomplices.

The police stated in the FIR that the accomplices were also arrested, while a search for the victim continued and the investigation was underway.

Despite the presence of anti-rape laws — with punishment for rape either resulting in the death penalty or imprisonment of between 10 and 25 years — cases continue to prevail in the country.

In July, a newlywed 19-year-old girl in Karachi’s Lyari, who was admitted to a hospital in critical condition after an alleged marital rape and “brutal sexual violence” at the hands of her husband, succumbed to her injuries. Her spouse was arrested by the police.

Earlier that month, Karachi police arrested the primary suspect allegedly involved in the gang-rape of a girl in Ittehad Town.