KARACHI, Nov 22: Two lawyers were arrested on Saturday for the gang-rape of an 18-year-old girl, who with her younger sister, had left their Gujranwala home reportedly to embrace Islam.

The police said that on Nov 17 the two sisters, who then belonged to the Christian faith, left their home and reached the Gujranwala railway station where they met a Karachi-based family.

They said the girls told the family head, Mohammed Rafique, that they wanted to go to Karachi as the circumstances in Gujranwala were not conducive to conversion.

The police said the two sisters came to Karachi on Nov 18 with Rafique’s family, who took them to their Korangi home.

They said that the following day Rafique took the two girls to a 55-year-old lawyer for legal formalities regarding conversion. The police said the two girls returned with Rafique after the lawyer told him to bring them again on Friday when they would be handed over to a shelter home.

They said that on Friday Rafique left the girls with the lawyer who with a friend, also a lawyer, took them to his flat on Allama Iqbal Road in the Tariq Road area instead of the shelter home he had promised to take them to.

The police said the two lawyers took the girls to a restaurant in Federal B Area for dinner before they took them to the flat.

They said the 55-year-old lawyer, whose family was away in Lahore, and his 53-year-old friend raped the 18-year-old girl. The other suspected rapist is also said to be married.

The police said the victim got an opportunity to call Rafique through her cellular phone in the small hours of Saturday and told him about their ordeal.

They said that Rafique rang up the police emergency number, 15, and the police recovered the victims and arrested one of the lawyers in the flat.

The police said that later the police also arrested the other suspect on a lead given by the arrested lawyer.

The Ferozabad police registered a case (FIR 1213/2008) under Sections 365-B (kidnapping for rape), 345 (wrongful confinement), 376-B (punishment for gang-rape) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code against the two lawyers on the complaint of the rape victim.

The SP investigation (south), Niaz Ahmed Khoso, told Dawn that the girls had been sent to a shelter home after a medical examination at the Civil Hospital.

Sources at the hospital’s medico-legal section said the medical examination report had been reserved till the receipt of a chemical examination report.