LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has referred a case to the Muzaffargarh police to determine if the death of a 16-year-old boy was a murder case after sexual assault or he committed suicide.

The agency sees the suspects a major child pornography ring working in the area.

The first year student was allegedly gang-raped by seven people and poisoned him. He later died mysteriously. The suspects allegedly shared the videos of the gangrape with his family members to blackmail them four months ago.

The FIA’s Cyber Crime Reporting Center (CCRC) lodged the FIR after an inquiry into the rape incident for four months or so when the father of the deceased boy submitted a complaint in March.

Consequent to the FIR, the CCRC arrested two of the seven alleged rapists - Sajid Husain and Muhammad Hamza. Other suspects are at large.

“The accused persons are involved in sexually abusing, sharing the obnoxious contents/video of the deceased student’s rape to his family members as well”, reads the FIA report.

The cyber crime officials seized mobile phones of the accused persons and expanded the scope of investigation after declaring it serious case of ‘child pornography’ in the region. The objectionable material, chat and whatsapp messages reported during forensic analysis of the victim boy’s mobile phone revealed that the accused persons have been blackmailing him and his family.

The FIA report said they found several video clips of child pornography besides the rape of the boy and the messages of the accused persons from their mobile phones.

The family first approached the local police but the case was eventually referred to the FIA after the boy’s rape videos came to surface.

Muzaffargarh DPO Hassan Iqbal said he had received the case from the FIA for investigation under section 174 of the CrPC.

He added that the Muzaffargarh police had already arrested a teacher of a private academy who had allegedly raped his young students.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2021