MUZAFFARABAD: A four-month pregnant woman who had been raped in the constituency of Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider last week and later attempted suicide, lost her unborn child due to the poison she had ingested, a doctor and the woman’s lawyer told journalists on Friday.

The 25-year-old woman had been raped by an influential man from another tribe and two accomplices last Friday on the outskirts of Chikar, a famous hill resort, while she was on her way home from a nearby village, where she had gone to see her sister.

The suspects had forced her into his jeep and driven her to a deserted shelter in a jungle where they assaulted her. They dropped her home afterwards and threatened her with dire consequences if she told the police.

The victim initially refrained from sharing the harrowing incident with her husband. When she told him about it the next morning, he told her to let it go because they couldn’t fight a case against the powerful and influential suspects.

The woman ingested rat poison in an attempt to commit suicide and was brought to Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan (SKZN) Hospital in Muzaffarabad for treatment.

The provisional medical report confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted.

She was released from hospital on Tuesday evening, a day after an official from the Chikar police station recorded her statement, on the basis of which an FIR was registered.

The main suspect was arrested the same evening and booked under Section 10 (3) of the Zina Act, commonly known as Zina Biljabar.

Victim ingested poison in a suicide bid

On Wednesday, the victim appeared before media, where she called for exemplary punishment for her tormentors and threatened self-immolation, along with her spouse and son, in front of the AJK prime minister’s office.

She and her husband met the AJK premier on Thursday and told him that they felt “extremely insecure” in their native area and requested that they be relocated somewhere in Muzaffarabad. They said that the prime minister had promised to provide them shelter in the capital.

A statement issued by the PM’s press secretary said that the prime minister had “taken serious stock of the incident” and directed the police and administration “to take all requisite measures to meet the demands of justice without any coercion”.

However that evening, the victim was hospitalised in SKZN Hospital once again, where a gynaecologist performed the dilatation and curettage procedure because the rat poison she had ingested had caused intrauterine death of her unborn child.

Asif Shahzad Abbasi, a lawyer representing the victim, said they had met tragedies in succession. He demanded extraordinary measures by the state and government to restore their trust in the justice system.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2017