A special bench of an anti-terrorism court in Lahore has handed a death sentence to Abid Malhi and Shafqat Ali alias Bagga for raping a woman on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway last year.
The two men raped the woman in front of her three children on September 9, 2020. It took the police one month to arrest prime suspect, Abid Malhi, while Shafqat Bagga surrendered himself.
The police submitted challan in the case on Feb 20 and the accused were indicted on March 3. The court held seven hearings and reserved a verdict on March 18. Judge Arshad Hussain Bhutta announced the verdict at Camp Jail in Lahore today (Saturday).
Forty witnesses recorded their testimonies and the prosecution succeeded in proving its case.
Both accused were handed death sentence under Article 376 and life imprisonment under 365 A of the PPC. They were sentenced to 14 years in prison separately.
Here’s what happened during the trial:
—The woman was accompanied by the police to the jail for the identification of the suspects.
—The prosecution argued that they found the DNA of the two suspects.
—Abid Malhi confessed to raping the woman twice, while Shafqat raped her once. They ran away after snatching Rs100,000 from her.
—Qasim Arain, the defence lawyer, made the following arguments.
- Call records don’t show Shafqat’s presence at the rape site.
- Shafqat was identified 22 days after his arrest. The law says that suspects should be identified in one week.
- Shafqat was coerced into confessing.
- IO was present was Shafqat was recording his statement. This is against the law.
- The policeman was who accompanying the survivor during the identification parade had seen the suspects before, adding that allowing him to accompany the woman was suspicious.
- It was claimed Abid Malhi is 35 years old, while he is 20 years old.
Woman raped on the motorway
The woman was driving to Gujranwala when she ran out of fuel near Lahore’s Gujjarpura. She called 15 for help and was sitting in her vehicle when two men walked towards her car, broke her window, and made her park on the roadside. They then took her and the children to a nearby forest and raped her.
The case became the top Twitter trend the next day because of the victim-blaming remarks made by the former Lahore CCPO Umar Shaikh.
Sheikh appeared on Dunya News after the rape was reported and decided it was better to talk about the survivor’s decision to take the motorway with her children at night before explaining what his force was doing to apprehend the rapists.
“The story is that this woman, if it is in your knowledge, left Defence at 12:30am for Gujranwala,” he said. “First, I am surprised that she, a mother of three children, chose to go without a driver. You left Defence, you [should] take the straight GT Road where there is population and go home.”
He later defended his statement by saying they were a “message” for people.
Protests across Pakistan
On September 12, men and women across Pakistan staged protests against the victim-blaming remarks and the police’s incompetence in the case.
Victim-blaming is very common, said Nasreen Siddiqui, who works at War Against Rape, during the protest outside Karachi Press Club. “The story just doesn’t seem to change, whether its girls getting molested or women getting raped.” The remarks made by the CCPO are a part of the same thinking process, even medico-legal officers and policemen do it. “You can’t keep half of your population locked up inside their houses. You need to make things safer for them instead,” Siddiqui remarked.
The prime suspect was arrested in Faisalabad a month after being on the run from the police. His accomplice, Shafqat, had surrendered.
