KARACHI: Expressing its annoyance over failure of the investigating officer in producing witnesses, an antiterrorism court has directed the prosecution to bind down the IO to produce witnesses for recording their testimonies against a man allegedly involved in a series of rapes of minor girls.

Police claimed to have arrested the accused for kidnapping and sexually assaulting minor girls in different areas of Malir district between 2015 and 2018.

The ATC-X judge, who is conducting the trial in five identical cases in the judicial complex inside the central prison, took up the case for recording statements of the prosecution witnesses.

The accused was produced in custody, but his counsel Liaqat Hussain Khokhar and IO DSP Ali Hassan Shah were absent.

Since Jan 12, the judge has been directing the prosecution to bind down the IO to produce witness for recording their statements against the accused but to no avail.

Taking notice of such an attitude, the judge once again directed the prosecution to ask the IO to appear in court on April 6 and also produce the witnesses so that their testimonies could be recorded.

According to the prosecution, the suspect was caught red-handed in the Sukkan area while allegedly trying to kidnap a minor girl with the intention to rape her.

It said though the child was not subjected to any sexual assault, on “suspicion” the police obtained the suspect’s DNA sample and sent it to a laboratory for cross-matching with those drawn from four minor girls who had earlier been subjected to a sexual assault but their cases had been pending trial since 2015.

The prosecutor had disclosed that the medical report revealed that the suspect’s sample had matched with those of the five children, who were victims of a sexual assault.

Five cases were registered under Sections 363 (punishment for kidnapping) and 376 (punishment for rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 (punishment for acts of terrorism) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 at Sukkan, Shah Latif and Quaidabad police stations.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2022