Two men kidnapped an eight-year-old girl and gang raped her for seven days in Pakistan. They later strangled her.
Receiving an anonymous tip about the crime, police raided a bus and arrested the two men, one dressed as a woman. He told the police that “he and his accomplice had abducted five minor girls and killed them after subjecting them to rape.”
They confessed to kidnapping the girl, raping her for seven days, and strangling her. But one official said that “the victim might have died due to profuse bleeding that resulted from repeated rape.”
The news comes only days after the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child found that at least “10 cases of child sexual abuse took place every day in 2015, bringing the total to 3,768 cases in the last year.” The researchers found that 21 percent of girls married before they turned 18 years old. They also accused the government of failing “to formulate policies and legislation that would work towards eliminating child labour.”
The media reported the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) considered a bill to outlaw pedophilia as “anti-Islamic” and “blasphemous” in February. The bill outlaws underage marriages and “recommended harsher punishments for those entering conjugal contracts with minors.” CII Chairman Muhammad Khan Sherani said Islamic laws say “marriage can be solemnised when a girl attains puberty.”
In January, four wealthy men kidnapped and gang-raped a seven-year-old boy. Officials said the men, while drunk, kidnapped the young boy and took him back to their settlement. They killed him with a rope after they raped him.
Two months later, the police rescued a nine-year-old girl from an arranged marriage to a 14-year-old boy in her village in Punjab province. They arrested four village elders responsible for the wedding.
“The girl’s brother’s wife died due to some health problems a few weeks ago, and (the wife’s) relatives suspected foul play and accused her family of murder,” declared deputy superintendent of police Mamoonur Rasheed. “On March 3, the village council decided to give the little girl in vani to settle the suspected murder.”
“Vani” means child marriage, which is common in Pakistan “to build and strengthen alliances, settle disputes or pay off debts.” Pakistani law does not allow children to marry under the age of 16, but most thwart the law and marry off their children. Police rarely intervene in these family matters.
Reuters reported the village elders “decided that the girl would be married to a 14-year-old cousin of her brother’s deceased wife, while the brother would pay 150,000 rupees ($1,430) to his dead wife’s family.”
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