PESHAWAR, July 16: A bench of the Peshawar High Court on Monday denied bail to four people charged with gang-raping a schoolgirl. The bench of Justice Shahjehan Khan Yousafzai observed that the accused did not deserve to be released on bail as they had been charged with committing a heinous crime.

The accused — Gul Zameer, Irshad Ali, Fazal Subhan and Bilal Hussain — were arrested on March 23 by the police on charges of kidnapping a minor girl, Miss K, from an area near Gulshan Colony a day earlier.

The victim, a student of ninth class, was returning home with her brother and mother when the accused forcibly took her away. Her brother was hit by the kidnappers’ vehicle when he tried to resist them.

The case’s FIR was registered at the Chamkani police station on March 23 under sections 365-B, 376 and 496 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The accused told the police that they were drunk on the night of the incident and a call girl accompanying them had told them that the girl, who was passing by with her family, was one of her friends. Upon hearing this they kidnapped the girl.

They claimed that when they realised that the girl belonged to a noble family they dropped her near the Ring Road without harming her. The police disputed their statement and alleged that the girl had been raped.

The petitioners denied the charges and contended that they had been falsely implicated in the case. They said the prosecution’s case was a flawed one and the evidence presented by the prosecution witnesses was contradictory.

The state counsel contended that the petitioners had been charged with a very brutal crime. He stated that it was a high-profile case and people of the area had protested against. The accused had been arrested because of immense public pressure.

They had allegedly raped a minor girl and did not deserve to be released on bail, he added.