KARACHI: A sessions court sentenced a man to a total of 50 years in prison in a case pertaining to the abduction and gang rape of a minor girl.
Additional District and Sessions Judge Naseer Noor Khan, who is also the presiding officer of the Gender-Based Violence Court (East), found Shahbaz alias Shabi guilty of abducting and intoxicating the 15-year-old girl and raping her along with two alleged co-accused in 2021. The court observed that the convicts also recorded a video of the sexual assault to blackmail the father of the victim.
The court awarded 10 years’ imprisonment for the offence under Section 365-B (kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel her for marriage, etc), five years under Section 337-J (causing hurt by means of poison), 20 years under Section 376 (rape), 14 years under Section 292-C (sale, etc, of obscene books) and one year for the offence under Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
It also imposed a fine of total over Rs1.6 million on him and on failure of its payment, the convict would serve additional imprisonment.
Reasoning for mitigating circumstances, the court observed that there are some negligible and minor inconsistencies as the IO did not collect the cloths of the survivor. However, it added, these minor defects and inconsistencies would not be sufficient enough to discard the entire prosecution case.
Court also imposes Rs1.6m fine on convict
Regarding the co-accused, the court noted: “Before parting with this judgment here, it will not be out of place to mention that per evidence of first investigating officer/ SIP Ali Muraad s/o Haji Baig Ali (retired). Custody of co-accused namely Mubashir Khalil s/o Khalil Ahmed, during investigation was handed over to Hawaldaar Feroze s/o Ahmed Zaman of Pakistan Army, vide memo of handing over of custody of co-accused Mubashir Khalil being Sepoy of Pakistan Army 3 Unit alongwith his personal search articles, dated 19-06-2021.”
“Record reflects that in this regard no any permission was obtained from this court nor from the concerned judicial magistrate. Therefore, inspector general of police, Sindh is directed to inquire into the matter and submit his detailed report before this court within one (01) month in respect of co-accused Mubashir Khalil s/o Khalil ahmed, without fail,” the court ruled.
According to state prosecutor Tahira Bano, the complainant informed the police that on the night of July 2021, her 15-year-old daughter had gone to buy some toffees from the nearby shop. On her way, the accused Shahbaz — who had fruit cart — stopped her daughter and lied that her father had been beaten by someone near Gora graveyard and offered her to come on his bike, which the girl agreed.
Meanwhile, the accused administered some intoxicating substance to her due to which she got unconscious and took her to an unknown location where he along with co-accused committed raped with her and recorded videos.
Later, the accused persons kept threatening the father through phone and asked him to send his daughter to them again, otherwise they would to upload those videos online.
In his statement, the accused alleged that he had some outstanding amount on the mother of the victim girl and when he asked for the payment, they falsely implicated him in this case.
However, the court rejected the defence contentions and it noted: “It cannot be accepted that a mother, even for a single moment, would think to involve her real daughter for falsely implicating a person just to avoid payment of some amount and knowingly leveling such allegation which is self-deprecating and that would tarnish her daughter’s and her family’s honor and dignity and put an un-washable stain/ stigma on the future life of her daughter: for such petty benefit.”
The case had been registered at Brigade police station under Sections 365-B, 337-J, 376,292-C and 506-B of the PPC.
Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2025
