A 14-year-old boy was allegedly molested by a police officer in Buner, police told Dawn.com on Friday, adding that the official has been suspended and booked.

According to the first information report (FIR) lodged late on Wednesday night — a copy of which is available with Dawn.com — the teenager reported to police that an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) approached him in the Barikot bazaar in Swat, adjacent to Buner. The ASI asked the victim for his phone number.

“When I told my phone number, he told me that I threatened someone from this number,” the victim alleged in the FIR. “He took me to his check post in Karakar Buner and after asking some questions, he took off my clothes, and sexually assaulted me.”

The victim further alleged that upon his screams, the ASI let him go and threatened him not to tell anyone. The victim is pursuing legal action against the ASI.

Buner District Police Officer (DPO) Shah Hassan Khan told Dawn.com that the suspect had been arrested and an FIR was lodged against him under sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or a shorter term) of the Pakistan Penal Code at Jowar Buner police station.

The ASI was also suspended from duty and the DPO added that an internal inquiry was also launched into the case and would be “investigated properly”.

Despite multiple laws against sexual assault, incidents are still widely reported across the country.

Last week, the principal of a private school in Lodhran was arrested on the charge of raping a 7th-grade student in a classroom nine months ago.

Lodhran Saddar Police arrested the suspect, who was also the owner of the school, upon a complaint from the father of the 12-year-old girl, who quit going to school after the incident but did not tell her parents about the incident.

The district police spokesperson said a rape case was registered against the suspect, who was arrested on the orders of Lodhran DPO Kamran Mumtaz.

In August, Sahil’s Six Months Cruel Numbers data revealed that a total of 1,630 cases of child abuse were reported from across the country.

In the first six months of 2024, 862 cases of child sexual abuse, 668 cases of abduction, 82 cases of missing children and 18 cases of child marriages were reported. This year, 48 cases of pornography after sexual abuse were also recorded.

Six-monthly data shows that out of the total reported cases, (962) 59pc of victims were girls and (668) 41pc were boys.