A sessions court on 27 August 2024 awarded life imprisonment to a man for raping a 13-year-old girl.
Umar Farooq was found guilty of assaulting his wife’s niece multiple times at his house in Baldia Town last year.
Additional Sessions Judge (West) Irshad Hussain observed that the prosecution established its case against the accused beyond reasonable doubt.
“The victim clearly implicated the above-named accused and assigned the role that he committed her rape multiple times in his house, whereas all the witnesses, including the complainant and wife of the accused, have admitted such fact that at the time of alleged offence the victim was residing in the same house with the accused,” noted the judge.
He said the woman medico-legal officer also supported the victim’s version that she was subjected to sexual abuse.
“I am of the confirmed view that the present accused has committed multiple times the shameful act of zina with the minor victim,” the jugde held and sentenced the man to rigorous imprisonment for life for the offence of rape.
The convict was ordered to pay a Rs200,000 fine or undergo an additional six-month imprisonment.
State prosecutor Jameela Saeed contended that the victim girl’s parents were drug addicts and her father had been incarcerated in a narcotics case for one year.
The teenager and her younger sister had been residing with their aunt and her husband Umar Farooq at their house in Qaimkhani Colony, Baldia Town. She said that after two months of committing to take care of the girls, Farooq asked his brother-in-law to take them back, after which their uncle brought the siblings to his house.
The prosecutor said that after some days, the victim complained of abdominal pain and on inquiry, she disclosed that her uncle had assaulted her many times after her aunt went to her native place before Eidul Azha in 2023 and warned her not to disclose it to anyone or else he would kill her younger sister.
Advocate Bahzad Akbar of the Legal Aid Society, who represented the complainant, contended that the victim fully implicated the accused in the heinous offence. Her testimony as well as medical evidence connected the accused with the commissioning of the offence, he said, requesting the judge to punish the accused as per the law.
In his statement recorded under Section 342 of the criminal procedure code, the accused denied allegations of the prosecution, stating that he had been implicated in the case at the instigation of the victim’s uncle due to a property dispute.
An FIR was lodged at the Ittehad Town police station under Section 376 (punishment for rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim’s uncle.
Published in News Daily on 29 August 2024.
