LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) has ruled that financial hardship cannot relieve a father of his legal, moral and religious obligation to provide maintenance for his minor child, declaring the responsibility a continuous duty protected under both Islamic and Pakistani law. In a detailed 15-page judgment, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani held that a father’s obligation to support his minor child cannot be waived through private agreements, settlements or compromises, as the child’s right
Child Rights in Focus
PESHAWAR: The elementary and secondary education department on May 31 issued guidelines for summer camps in public and private schools to cover the learning losses that occurred due to shortening the week to four days in light of the petroleum crisis that emerged in the wake of the Iran-US war. The guidelines have been issued for the successful conduct of camps in all summer zone schools of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and will be applicable for
BAHAWALPUR: Bahawalpur Saddar police claimed on May 31 to have arrested a man who allegedly raped a minor boy on the night of May 30. According to the police, ‘H’ (13), son of Abdul Malik, a resident of Javed Colony, Bahawalpur, was returning from the tailor’s shop, where he worked as an apprentice, when the suspect, ‘F’, lured him to his house, where he served the boy a spiked drink. When the boy fell
MUZAFFARABAD: A groom, his father and a cousin were arrested in the early hours of May 31 after celebratory firing at a wedding claimed the life of a nine-year-old boy, police said. City Police Station House Officer (SHO) Manzar Hussain Chughtai told Dawn that police received information late on Saturday night that a boy, identified as Haider Ali, son of Majid Malik, had been struck in the head by a bullet and shifted to
SARAI MUGHAL: Police in Wandhar area in Pattoki tehsil have registered a case against four named suspects following an alleged attempt to assault a minor child on May 31. The case was registered on a complaint filed by the victim’s family. As per the text of the First Information Report (FIR), the incident occurred when a young child went to bathe at a tube well located in the fields. The FIR alleges that four
TOBA TEK SINGH: Batala Colony police registered a murder case against six persons, including a woman posing as a doctor and her five accomplices in Faisalabad. Police arrested two of the suspects. Reports said a woman and her newborn baby allegedly died due to the negligence of a quack in Faisalabad on May 30, prompting the deceased woman’s relatives to stage a protest outside a private facility, Abdul Shakoor Trust Hospital, located on Hilal
PESHAWAR: Officials in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department warn that the opening of the 300-bed Peshawar Children Hospital, affiliated with the Khyber Institute of Child Health, is likely to remain in limbo if the Rs2 billion bridge financing promise for the project isn’t fulfilled by the provincial government by the end of next month. Last December, the provincial government declared the Khyber Institute of Child Health a medical teaching institution and announced a board
EVERY year, rabies, the deadliest zoonotic disease, kills more than 59,000 people worldwide. In Pakistan, it is one of myriad public health challenges poised to become an epidemic. Between January and April, Sindh recorded a staggering 85,891 cases of dog bites. Last year, it logged over 285,000 cases with 22 lives lost to the virus, as per data from major hospitals. While the chief minister has launched an anti-rabies campaign across Sindh, promised the
One day Suhana, a Year 6 student, entered the classroom with tears in her eyes. Her teachers had noticed that she had become unusually quiet over the past few months and was continuously failing her assessments. Teachers often called her out, asking her to focus more on studies and improve her test performance, but she never explained what she was going through. She would quietly sit in the corner, avoiding conversations and struggling to
BUCHIANA: Police have registered a murder case and arrested three suspects, including the victims’ mother and stepfather, after the bodies of a teenage stepbrother and stepsister were found in fields in Chak No. 566-GB in Buchiana. According to police, the gruesome incident created fear and panic in the area after the bodies were discovered on the morning of May 21. Police officials, including the SP Jaranwala and SHO Buchiana, reached the scene along with
KARACHI: A sessions court on May 20 sentenced a seminary teacher to 15 years in prison each in two cases after he was found guilty of sexually abusing two of his students in a local madressah in Landhi. Additional District and Sessions Judge Naseer Noor Khan, who is also the presiding officer of the Gender Based Violence Court East, found Qari Muhammad Anwar — a teacher in a madressah in Landhi — guilty of
BAJAUR/KHYBER: Two schoolchildren were killed after a quadcopter drone, reportedly operated from an unknown location, struck a hilly area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district on May 21. Local residents and official sources told Dawn that the fatal incident occurred in the Shahi Thangi area, located about 25 kilometres from Khar, the district headquarters of Bajaur, around noon. They added that the children were returning home from school when they were hit, leaving them critically wounded. The