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Finally, Pakistan has come to a point when sexual abuse is being countered on all fronts. Be it the women protection bill or the speedy arrests in child abuse cases, the animals are being named and shamed, both by the media and the competent authorities.
After 7-year-old Zainab Ansari was raped and murdered, the country was left literally woke. Nobody was ready to forgive the culprit, nor others in gauged in similar cases. Ever since Zainab’s case, a crackdown has begun on child sex abusers and rapists all over the country.
Recently, two men from Gujranwala were arrested for raping underage girls and filming them in the process. These videos were then used for blackmail and as child porn. The arrests were made in retaliation of the grieving families’ protests in the city.
Rashid and Tariq Shah, the two men who were behind the heinous crimes, were apprehended and a FIR was launched against them, but this was not done by the victims of the families, but by the police itself. Both the accused run a video store in Gujranwala’s Kohluwala area, and a good number of CCTV cameras and LEDs were recovered from their shop. It is alleged that the duo used these cameras to film the rape and then used to sell the videos to customers they already had.
One of the suspects claims that he is a spiritual healer, a Peer, and women brought their daughters to him for a check up, not for anything else. The case registered at the police station states that both Rashid and Tariq grabbed two little girls from the road, took them to their shop, raped and filmed them, before letting them go.
As diligent as the CM Punjab Mian Shehbaz Sharif is, he instantly took notice of the situation and handled it before the protests got out of hand, along with the IG police and DPO Gujranwala. When investigation began, police recovered over a dozen videos from the suspects’ shop, all being rape movies of minor children.
Four members of a gang were also arrested from Karachi on charges of sexual abuse. The men used to make false promises of giving needy women jobs, later taking them to a farmhouse and raping them.
Ever since the Kasur child scandal, Pakistan has accepted that sexual abuse is one of the worst vices in the country and it needs to be countered. The country is working towards progress, which is a step in the right direction.
