MUZAFFARABAD, Sept 12: A middle-aged woman from the Neelum Valley alleged here on Tuesday that she was sexually assaulted by four men in her village but a local Muslim Conference leader stopped her family from reporting the incident to police, saying that he would decide the matter in a jirga.

Qasim Jan, 45, told reporters that she was subjected to the tormenting crime in the night of Friday (Sept 8) when her husband Abdul Rehman was not at home.

A resident of Chalai village, some 52 kilometres northeast of Muzaffarabad, Qasim Jan alleged that the accused, who were seven in number, hauled her half a mile away from her house to a deserted house owned by one of them.

“They threatened to break my bones and then shoot me,” she told reporters in a choked voice, as her husband, her eldest daughter Riffat, 15, and two other children looked on.

Ms Jan spoke to reporters at the office of ‘Press for Peace’, a non-governmental organisation of Kashmiri journalists working for human rights and environmental protection, after she and her family met DIG Police (Headquarters) Tahir Mahmood Qureshi in his office. The DIG issued instructions to the Neelum Valley police to submit a report on the alleged incident within five days. Ms Jan named Rafique and his brother-in-law Abdul Shakoor, Ghulam Mustafa and his sons Mushtaq and Rafaqat, Farid Ahmed and Shaukat as accused in her application to the DIG and said four of them raped her.

She said after about two hours, some of the accused also brought her eldest daughter and confined her in a separate room.

“When I came to know she is in the other room, I fell on their feet and begged them in the name of Allah and His Messenger not to molest my daughter,” she said.

The girl said four people dragged her to the same house but did not assault her. “Late in the night they allowed me to join my mother in the next room,” she added. Ms Jan said the next morning the accused shifted both of them to Athmuqam to the house of local MC leader Haji Malik Yaseen where her husband also arrived.