PESHAWAR, July 25: Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan on Wednesday took suo motu notice of the recovery of a minor girl from an alleged brothel in Swat district and directed that she should be shifted forthwith to the Women Crises Centre in Peshawar.

The judge also asked the director-general of the NWFP health services to constitute a three-member medical board for medical examination of the girl and submit the report within a week. Justice Tariq Pervez has taken the suo motu notice after some national dailies published the incident. The Swat police recovered the girl from a house on July 22.

Earlier, the Society for the Protection of Rights of the Child (Sparc) appealed to the chief justice and the government to take notice of the case and hold a proper medical examination of the girl.

The organisation claimed that the girl appeared to be nine or 10 years old, but the medical examination showed that she was 13. It said the woman medical officer who examined the girl had avoided mentioning in specific terms that she had been raped.

“We have been providing free legal aid and will also meet all her expenses,” said Aamir Mughal, provincial manager of Sparc. He said the organisation’s coordinator in Swat, Shoukat Saleem advocate, appeared for the girl in Swat.

An FIR of the case was registered at the Mingorah police station under section 13/14 of the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979.

Police said that they had acted on tip-off that a proclaimed offender was hiding at a house on the Gumbad Mera road. Police raided the house and recovered the girl. She told police that her father had sold her to a woman, Ms Safia, who had been using her for the purpose of prostitution.

Police arrested the woman and produced the girl before a court in Swat which sent her to a local Darul Aman.

The girl recorded her statement before the court of judicial magistrate under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code. “My mother has eloped with another man and my father, Aziz, is a drug addict. My father sold me to Ms Safia for Rs40,000 a year ago,” she stated.

The girl said that Ms Safia, her husband Mohammad Hussain and a man, Hazrat Ali, used to receive Rs1,000 from each man and leave her alone in a room with them. “Daily three to four men sexually abused me,” she said, adding: “I don’t want to go back to my father because he will sell me again.”