ISLAMABAD: The woman who was found bound and gagged on a roadside in the capital on Wednesday and claimed to be a foreign national turned out to be a permanent resident of Rawalpindi.

Police officers told Dawn that a special committee had been formed under the supervision of a senior superintendent of police (SSP), comprising the subdivisional police officer, station house officers of Aabpara and women police stations and an official from the Special Sexual Offence Investigation Unit after the investigators remained clueless to establish the nationality of the woman who claimed to be from Belgium.

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The committee took the woman to the Nadra headquarters for identification as no travel record was available with the FIA and the embassy. Through her facial recognition and fingerprint impression, the woman was identified as a Pakistani national and a permanent resident of Rawalpindi.

Earlier, medico-legal examination of the woman was conducted at Polyclinic to establish her allegation that she was raped. She was then shifted to the Women Police Station and kept under protective custody there.

The woman is still not ready to give a statement to the police which are working to ascertain the motive behind her claim to be a foreign national and under which circumstances she was left on the roadside, the officers added.

The woman was found bound and gagged on a roadside at G-6/1-3. After getting information, a police team reached the spot and shifted her to a hospital.

She had introduced herself as a Belgian national and alleged that she had been living with a man who repeatedly raped her. The woman was unable to produce any identity document as she had no belongings with her.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2024