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Today's Paper | May 05, 2024

Published 21 Sep, 2019 08:40pm

2 suspects sent to jail after alleged sexual assault of 2 minor girls in Mandi Bahauddin

Two suspected child abusers were sent to jail after being accused of sexually harassing two minor girls in Mandi Bahauddin, City Police Station DPO Nasir Sial told DawnNewsTV on Saturday.

According to DPO Sial, the two suspects have been sent to the district jail in Mandi Bahauddin on 14-day judicial remand.

Two separate incidents took place in the district's Usmania Mohalla and Mughalpura neighbourhoods in which a nine-year-old and a 10-year-old were allegedly molested and raped respectively.

A police report was filed following both instances, naming the two suspects who were subsequently arrested.

The nine-year-old girl, a resident of the Usmania Mohalla, had gone out of her home at around 7pm on Wednesday to buy kulfi (icecream) from a cart vendor in the neighbourhood street when the vendor allegedly molested her, according to a report filed on the complaint of the girl's mother, who stated that she witnessed the act.

The mother further stated that she, along with her son and another man, caught the vendor red-handed but he managed to flee.

The 10-year-old girl, a temporary resident of Mughalpura, had left home on Thursday to play with the neighbourhood children at a nearby park, according to a police report filed by the girl's father. When she did not return for a while, he along with two other residents left to search for her at around 11:30pm, the report added.

In a nearby alley, cries of the girl were heard which prompted the search party to rush to the direction they were coming from.

The father, in the report, said that he found his daughter with her clothes removed as well as the suspect — who managed to escape — in that state. He alleged that the suspect had raped his daughter.

The incidents came in the wake of a grisly discovery earlier this week in Kasur's Chunian district, where the bodies of three minors, who seem to have been killed after rape, were found.

In the last few years, Kasur has been rocked by multiple incidents of abuse, rape and killing of children. In January 2018, six-year-old Zainab Ansari was found dead in a trash heap near Shahbaz Khan Road, five days after she went missing. Hers was the 12th such incident to have occurred within a 10-kilometre radius in Kasur over a 12-month period. Her death had sparked nationwide protests and outrage.

The prime suspect, Imran Ali, had been arrested on Jan 23, 2018, and on June 12 the Supreme Court had turned down his appeal against the death sentence, noting that he had admitted to committing similar offences with eight other minor victims. Ali was subsequently executed in October.

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