Two men reportedly belonging to an influential family allegedly sexually assaulted a teenage boy after intoxicating him in Punjab's Sargodha district on Friday, police said.

The latest incident in a string of child sexual abuse cases that have rocked the country this week took place in Shahpur tehsil, about 30 kilometres from Sargodha.

The victim in this case, a 13-year-old boy, was returning home after attending a madressah (religious seminary) when two young men, who were reportedly under the influence, took the teenager along with them to a poultry shed. There, the drunk men coaxed the boy into consuming wine on the pretext of offering him some other drink.

The suspects then subjected the boy to sexual assault and fled, leaving the victim in the shed in a distressed state.

See: How you should prepare your child for the risks on the street, and those at home

After hearing his cries, a passerby formed the police who took the boy to a hospital. The report of a medical examination conducted on the victim is awaited, police told Dawn.

Police have registered the incident and are carrying out raids to arrest the accused.

It has been learnt that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has summoned a report of the sexual assault on minor children from Sargodha Police. According to the report, the summary of which was released in a press statement, as many as 14 cases of sexual assault were registered during last year in Sargodha district and all the accused involved in these cases were arrested and made to face trial in courts.

This report, however, does not include incidents of rape-cum-murder of children, in which most accused have not been traced. In two such cases, the accused who were suspected of raping children were killed by police while they attempted to escape from police custody.

The latest incident comes in the wake of widespread outrage and demonstrations across the country protesting against the rape and murder of 6-year-old Zainab Amin in Kasur, whose body was recovered from a trash heap in the city earlier this week.

As the country reeled from Zainab's murder, the body of a 15-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and murdered was recovered from a field in Tasawarabad, some 40km off Sargodha on Thursday.

Editorial

Updated 12 Aug, 2026

Mideast outreach

OVER the past few days, Pakistan has been going the extra mile to assure Iran that the Makkah Joint Defence ...
12 Aug, 2026

Nutrition emergency

MALNUTRITION has become one of the biggest obstacles to Pakistan’s development. Around 40pc of children under five...
12 Aug, 2026

Housing deficit

THE federal cabinet’s zoning directive has the potential to be the most consequential decision in the redefinition...
Updated 11 Aug, 2026

Equal citizens

Religious minorities continue to face mob violence, attacks on their places of worship, forced conversions and social and economic exclusion.
Updated 11 Aug, 2026

Tel Aviv’s subterfuge

These verbal gymnastics indicate that Tel Aviv has no intention of ending its occupation of the Strip.
11 Aug, 2026

Abandoned after floods

THREE years after the 2022 floods submerged a third of Pakistan, more than 134,000 verified affected families in...