Two men reportedly belonging to an influential family allegedly sexually assaulted a teenage boy after intoxicating him in Punjab's Sargodha district on Friday, police said.

The latest incident in a string of child sexual abuse cases that have rocked the country this week took place in Shahpur tehsil, about 30 kilometres from Sargodha.

The victim in this case, a 13-year-old boy, was returning home after attending a madressah (religious seminary) when two young men, who were reportedly under the influence, took the teenager along with them to a poultry shed. There, the drunk men coaxed the boy into consuming wine on the pretext of offering him some other drink.

The suspects then subjected the boy to sexual assault and fled, leaving the victim in the shed in a distressed state.

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After hearing his cries, a passerby formed the police who took the boy to a hospital. The report of a medical examination conducted on the victim is awaited, police told Dawn.

Police have registered the incident and are carrying out raids to arrest the accused.

It has been learnt that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has summoned a report of the sexual assault on minor children from Sargodha Police. According to the report, the summary of which was released in a press statement, as many as 14 cases of sexual assault were registered during last year in Sargodha district and all the accused involved in these cases were arrested and made to face trial in courts.

This report, however, does not include incidents of rape-cum-murder of children, in which most accused have not been traced. In two such cases, the accused who were suspected of raping children were killed by police while they attempted to escape from police custody.

The latest incident comes in the wake of widespread outrage and demonstrations across the country protesting against the rape and murder of 6-year-old Zainab Amin in Kasur, whose body was recovered from a trash heap in the city earlier this week.

As the country reeled from Zainab's murder, the body of a 15-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and murdered was recovered from a field in Tasawarabad, some 40km off Sargodha on Thursday.

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