Zainab’s case is still fresh in the mind, but for many others, in Kasur and beyond, the wounds of rape are equally raw.
L’s grandmother rubs her forehead as she remembers the day her granddaughter was abducted in Kasur on her way to a Quran class. “She turned and waved goodbye to her mother at the end of the lane,” she says, her voice breaking. “The class was just four lanes away. She was kidnapped around this time, because her body was found just half an hour later in an abandoned building.”
The sheer force of the rape is still sinking into her. She cannot even cry. “Her arm was broken and her knee was bent when she was found. Since that day, we have never let any of our children out of sight. And we have specifically told them not to talk to strangers or accept things from them.”
“The police did absolutely nothing to help us,” says L’s uncle who has come home to drop his daughter. “Neither did the CM. But all the help we are asking for is to make our neighbourhoods safe again, and to never let this happen again.”
Even SHO Mehmood admits that it was the police’s fault, although his reasons do not lie in either inefficiency or lack of resources. “I don’t think God was with us when we were investigating,” he says. “I could swear that I wanted to solve this case, but he [the serial killer] slipped away each time.”
Objections have already been raised against the lack of time spent by the police on the crime scene investigation along with other forms of follow up investigations. Aurat Foundation’s Regional Director Mumtaz Mughal says that an inefficient police investigation causes a weak prosecution, and so does the undeserving release of sex offenders in society by the criminal justice system. In any case the conviction rates are overall very low, and offenders know it is easy to do what they want, she says. Many cases never even reach the court.
Worryingly the police have led a few encounters, two in Sargodha, one in Kasur — where they claim sex offenders have been killed. But this extrajudicial approach just brushes the issue under the carpet. It also diverts from the matter at hand: Pakistan’s children are being abused but no permanent safeguards exist to protect them.
The best defence is of course greater education among children on what safe interactions are and where their personal boundaries are being crossed. Although these concepts are typically taught in schools at a suitable age, the term ‘sex education’ has come to assume negative connotations in Pakistan. In the renowned Lahore Grammar School, for example, many parents themselves refused to get behind the notion of providing sensitisation education to their daughters. Complaints were lodged with the provincial government too. In turn, the government too threatened to confiscate textbooks if “sex education” was to become part of the curriculum.
In a recent verdict handed down in a case against corporal punishment that was pleaded by child rights activist Miqdad Ali Naqvi, the Punjab government was ordered to form a child rights commission. This was on December 22, 2017.
“The LHC judge noticed that the UN Conventions of the Rights of the Child 1989 were not being met,” says Naqvi. “We are still awaiting the formation of the Commission.”
Child rights’ activist Iftikhar Mubarik has spent the last few years pushing the government for the same reason but in vain. “After the 18th amendment we needed a provincial level commission that would take care of every right of the child including any violence or abuse they face,” he says. “The purpose is to have inter-departmental collaboration, so no overlapping or problems would occur. Right now we have laws enacted that are contradictory to each other so we need one department looking after children’s matters.”
So, for example, if the Right to Education law says that education is compulsory for children aged five to 16 years, a law banning children from working brick kilns shows age 14 as the age limit.
“At the governmental level there are verbal or on paper policies, but the lack of a child rights commission proves that the government is non-serious,” he says. Meanwhile, Kainat’s neighbours, who are also her relatives say that none of the children are now allowed to come and go as they please. “We pick and drop them, no matter what,” says one elder.
But all this is easier said than done. L’s grandmother caresses her picture on a poster which the family carried during a protest in June last year. And says a silent prayer: may no daughter of ours face such a fate ever again.
The writer is a member of staff.
She tweets @XariJalil
Published in Dawn, EOS, January 21st, 2018