KARACHI, April 10: The three alleged rapists of two sisters were again remanded, on Wednesday, in police custody for further interrogation and investigation by a judicial magistrate.
The suspected rapists — Ismatullah, a constable posted at Saddar Town; Malik Safeer, a dismissed cop and Kashif, a laundry shop owner — were arrested on Thursday for raping two sisters in their Ranchhore Lines flat on April 1.
Their two accomplices, Qamar Iqbal, a constable of CIA Saddar and Malik Hasnat, s/o Inspector Malik Shabbir Awan, are still untraceable.
The police produced the three alleged rapists in the court of the Judicial Magistrate, South, Irum Jahangir, amid tight security.
Earlier, on Monday, the three suspects were identified on Monday by the victim sisters while recording their statements before the judicial magistrate.
The gang of five accused had barged into the flat of Abdus Sattar, held the inmates hostage at gunpoint and gang-raped his two daughters, aged 19 and 22 years old.
According to the elder sister, a divorcee with an infant, she was raped by all the five accused. Her younger sister, a maid, stated that she was raped by accused Malik Safeer only.
Abdus Sattar, the father of the victims, and his son, Abdul Jabbar, also identified the three suspects before the judicial magistrate.
Earlier, the police also produced the three suspects before Justice Shabbir Ahmed of the Sindh High Court, the administrative judge of ATCs in Karachi, who ordered the investigators to take the suspects to the court of the concerned judicial magistrate.
Meanwhile, the police picked up another policeman, raising the number of cops in police custody to ten in the Ramaswami gang-rape case.
A police official said that the police raided the South police lines house of ASI Malik Mohammad Iqbal, brother-in-law of the absconding suspect Malik Qamar Iqbal, where they found the house locked. The police came to know that Mohammad Iqbal was on guard duty at State Bank of Pakistan. The police took him into custody to inquire about the whereabouts of the absconding suspect.
Iqbal told the police that since the Ramaswami incident, he had not met the absconding accused. He also told the police that his family had gone to his native village in Punjab.
Earlier on April 6, nine police officials, family members or relatives of the two absconding rapists in the Ramaswami gang-rape incident, had been taken into custody for interrogation.
Malik Qamar Iqbal, a constable of Investigation Wing and Malik Hasnat are the alleged rapists still at large.