PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court has granted bail to two suspects arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a minor boy and recording his objectionable video.

A single-member bench consisting of Justice Mohammad Naeem Anwar accepted petition of the two suspects named Habibullah and Mohammad Shahid with condition to furnish two surety bonds of Rs200,000 each.

The bench observed that the only evidence available against the petitioners was video recording of the occurrence saved in a USB memory stick.

It was added that although experts at the forensic laboratory had not reported any editing features in the said video but at this stage no opinion could be formed regarding the contents of the video and it was for the trial court to analyse it in juxtaposition with statement of the victim and other circumstantial evidence on record.

The bench observed that the complainant had alleged that the petitioners had repeated the detestable act upon him on different dates, however, the detail thereof was not emerging from the record nor any medical report was available on record to support his version.

The FIR of the alleged offence was registered police station Bahrain, Swat, on Oct 4, 2023, under section 292-C (punishment for child pornography) and 377 (unnatural offence) of the Pakistan Penal Code and section 53 (sexual abuse) of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Act.

The complainant/victim, who was 16, had claimed that the two suspects/petitioners had sexually assaulted him and also recorded his video in the month of March.

He claimed that on the basis of the said video the two petitioners continued to blackmail and sexually abuse him from time-to-time.

He said that due to fear that his video would be made viral he didn’t tell anyone about the issue, but finally he informed his uncle who took him to the police station for registration of the case.

The petitioners’ counsel contended that the FIR was registered after a delay of around seven months.

The bench observed that except the threat with regard to circulation of his video by the petitioners, the victim had not offered any plausible explanation at the time of report that why he had kept mum for such long time and did not bring the matter into the notice of his elders or local police.

It was observed that the delay in report, being inordinate and unexplained, couldn’t be ignored while deciding instant petition for bail.

Earlier, a child protection court in Swat had on Nov 21, 2023, rejected bail plea of the two petitioners observing that they were directly named in the FIR for commission of the offence affecting society at large.

That court had observed that that the objectionable video of the victim had been obtained by the police from social media and had also impounded mobile phones of the petitioners with a memory card containing the said objectionable video which had been sent to the Punjab Forensic Science Laboratory, Lahore, for analysis.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2024