PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has rejected the bail plea of a private school’s principal for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl student in Buner district last year.

Justice Mohammad Ijaz Khan of a single-member bench observed that the medical evidence confirmed the girl’s claim about sexual assault and the accused was prima facie connected with the commission of the offence.

The bench observed that there was no possibility of the accused’s misidentification by the girl as he was the principal of the school, where she studied.

The FIR of the sexual assault was registered at the Daggar police station in Buner on July 5, 2022, on the complaint of the girl’s father.

The case was registered under the Pakistan Penal Code’s Section 365-B (kidnapping of a woman to compel her for marriage) and Section 376 (rape) and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Act’s Section 53 (sexual abuse).

The complainant said that his daughter went missing from home and suspected the involvement of the accused as the mobile phone used by the family had the latter’s messages for her to visit the school.

He alleged that the accused had taken his daughter away for illegal marriage as she was an underage girl.

The complainant said that her daughter was enrolled in the accused’s private school but he had stopped her from going there four months ago.

He said that the police later recovered his daughter from the custody of the accused and that she recorded a statement with a judicial magistrate accusing the accused for sexually assaulting her in a room of the school.

The bench ruled that Section 376 of the Pakistan Penal Code under which the accused was charged carried the maximum punishment of death or life and therefore, the same fell in the prohibitory clause of Section 497 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The counsel for the complainant, Muhtaram Shah, and assistant advocate general Sohail Sultan opposed the bail petition and contended that the accused was named in the FIR as well as in the statement recorded by the assault victim.

They added that the accused was charged with committing a heinous offence, so he was not entitled to the concession of bail.

In October last year, additional sessions judge and head of the ‘gender-based violence court’ at Daggar Qaiser Khan Afridi, rejected the bail plea of the petitioner observing that the accused was a school principal by profession and the victim was his student.

He had observed that the offence for which the accused had been charged was not only of moral turpitude but affected the entire society as well.

The judge had ruled that the medical and the Forensic Science Laboratory’s reports also supported the stand of the prosecution.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2023