RAWALPINDI: A 10-year-old boy was found strangled inside his makeshift hut in the New Chakra area of Naseerabad police station on Thursday night, police said. Mohammad Bilal, 34, a resident of New Chakra, lodged an FIR with the police, saying he sold flower bouquets and lived in a makeshift tent on his piece of land. He said he had four children, including two daughters, and his elder son, Khurram Ali, was about 10 years
Child Rights in Focus
LAHORE: A judicial magistrate on Sep 30 sent a teenage suspect to jail on a 14-day judicial remand in a case of allegedly attempting to poison his father after seeking information about poisoning from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) produced the 17-year-old suspect before Judicial Magistrate Naeem Wattoo on the completion of his three-day physical remand. The magistrate asked the investigating officer (IO) whether the suspect’s father had
LAHORE: In a major step toward updating centuries-old personal laws, the Punjab Assembly Standing Committee on Human Rights and Minority Affairs on Sep 30 unanimously approved the Christian Marriage Bill 2026, raising the minimum legal age of marriage for both bride and groom to 18 years and paving the way for mandatory official registration with Nadra (National Database and Registration Authority) and local union councils. The meeting, chaired by MPA Raheela Khadam Hussain, approved
QUETTA: Allah Dad, a resident of Dalbandin, along with his wife, has appealed to the Balochistan chief minister and top officials to transfer the case of rape and murder of their seven-year-old daughter in Noshki to the Special Court for Violence Against Women and Children in Quetta. Speaking at a press conference here, Mr Dad said that last month he and his family had travelled from Dalbandin to Noshki to attend the fateha of
The sight of a school van reduced to a burnt-out shell in Murree should be enough to dispel any illusion that Pakistan’s existing approach to school transport is working. Children travelling to a school on Tuesday suffered burns after their van left the road and caught fire. Preliminary reports indicate that the vehicle was carrying more passengers than its designated capacity and did not have a fire extinguisher. The incident raises a basic question.
RAWALPINDI: Following the school van fire incident in Murree, the City Traffic Police has formed special squads to check fire safety arrangements in public service and school vans to prevent such incidents in future. A spokesman for the City Traffic Police Murree said in a press release that, on the orders of District Police Officer Murree Raza Tanveer Sipra and Chief Traffic Officer Murree Munir Ahmed Hashmi, special squads of traffic wardens had been formed to
ABBOTTABAD: The Abbottabad Bench of the Peshawar High Court has dismissed a post-arrest bail petition filed by Shahrukh Habib, an accused in a case involving the alleged rape of a minor girl, observing that the material available on record at this stage provided reasonable grounds to connect the petitioner with the alleged occurrence. Justice Syed Mudasser Ameer passed the order while deciding Criminal Miscellaneous Petition, filed by Shahrukh Habib against the State and another.
ISLAMABAD: A 17-month-old girl in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu division tested positive for poliovirus, taking this year’s tally of cases from across the country to five. Among the five cases confirmed so far in the country, four have been detected in Bannu division alone while a single case was reported in Sindh, an official of the National Emergency Operations Centre confirmed to Dawn on Tuesday. The latest case is from the Khandar Khankhel UC of
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board plans to change the textbooks for each grade in line with the semester system recently introduced in public and private schools. “The decision to change the course books of each grade has been taken after the implementation of semester system in schools by elementary and secondary education department,” officials told Dawn. They said that not only the size of books would be reduced but also a couple of
KARACHI: Nineteen days after he was shot dead during a house robbery in Manghopir, family and relatives of 17-year-old Rosham Hussain ended their protest sit-in outside the Manghopir police station and buried their loved one in a local graveyard on Sep 27. His funeral prayer was offered at a ground near the Attock petrol pump in Manghopir and was attended by a large number of people, including the deceased’s family members, relatives, area residents and
Incidents of sexual violence against girls in Peshawar have escalated into a grave crisis, with another child becoming the latest victim of a gang rape by neighbours that left her in critical condition. According to Chamkani police, the father of the 10-year-old girl, residents of Budhai, reported that his daughter had remained unconscious for several days. Upon regaining consciousness, she disclosed that three neighbours, Ismail, Ibrahim and Hamza, also residents of Budhai, had forcibly
In my classroom, I encounter students who are more concerned with securing marks than acquiring knowledge. Some have learned to memorise answers, while others believe grades could be secured through influence or money. Parents, too, often measure educational success by examination scores and admission to prestigious university programmes. The result is an education culture in which certificates matter more than competence and grades matter more than genuine learning. While conducting research into why Pakistan