PESHAWAR: A local court has indicted a private school’s principal on charges of child abuse, pornography, rape, blackmail and illicit relations.

The accused, Attaullah Marwat, pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Additional district and sessions judge Yasir Shabbir fixed next hearing into the case for Feb 3 and summoned prosecution witnesses to appear before him.

The accused, who is the private school’s owner, was arrested after the Hayatabad police station registered a case against him on July 14, 2017, on the complaint of a boy student, who had accused him of sexually exploiting schoolchildren, including girls, and filming them by secret cameras installed on campus.

The bail pleas of the accused have already been dismissed by the Peshawar High Court and district and sessions judge.

Schoolboy complained the accused sexually exploited students and filmed them by secret cameras

The trial court framed charges against him on eight counts falling under Pakistan Penal Code Section 354-A (stripping woman of her clothes), 376 (punishment for rape), 377-B (sexual abuse of child), 489-C (counterfeit currency), 497 (adultery) and 509 (sexual harassment), and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Act, 2010, sections 48 (child pornography), 50 (seducing a child) and 53 (sexual abuse).

One of the charges against the accused is that he had forced, persuaded, coerced and enticed girl students aged below 18 years to engage in sexual activities and exposed their bodies, and was involved in explicit sexual conduct and abuse of minor schoolgirls.

The accused is also charged with forcing, coercing and persuading girl students of his school to sexual activities and capturing those acts on his mobile phones, USBs and secret cameras installed in different parts of the school.

The accused had allegedly ‘on multiple occasions and habitually’ enticed and compelled multiple women of different ages to have illicit relations with him inside the school.

He is also charged with sexually assaulting many women after obtaining their consent through death threats.

Following his arrest last year, the accused had recorded his confessional statement with a judicial magistrate on July 19, 2017, wherein he had only admitted that he used to bring women from outside to the school for the purpose of adultery.

He had said it was his hobby to make videos of those sexual activities.

He had also admitted that 26 such videos, which he had made, were stored on his personal computer.

The issue had surfaced after a student of the said school (name withheld) had told the police that the accused was involved in sexual exploitation of students and teachers.

He had alleged that he (accused) had sexually exploited students, teachers and some outsider women but nobody had the courage to disclosing or report the matter.

The complainant had alleged that the principal had also showed him several objectionable videos, which he had recorded secretly through cameras, and also invited him to get involved in such acts.

In the FIR, the police have said when they raided the school, the accused tried to conceal his two cellphones, which allegedly had several objectionable videos involving schoolboys.

It added that the accused used three rooms of his school for those illegal activities.

The police had recovered memory cards and USBs and saw several videos showing the accused sexually exploiting students, including girls, in different parts of his private school.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2018