Search on for suspected child abusers: Police
MULTAN: Pakistan’s police said they were searching for members of a gang accused of abusing minors and making pornographic videos in a marriage hall in the eastern Punjab province.
Four suspects from the group were already arrested in a raid late on Friday in the Sahiwal district, said officer Umar Daraz. The men were presented before a court on Saturday, allowing police to question them for four days.
Daraz said police seized 46 pornographic videos from cell phones and a USB drive, which allegedly show the suspects sodomising boys aged between eight and 12 years.
Initial questioning revealed that the one of the gang members is a vendor at the city’s main bus terminal, he said, adding that the man would lure boys who were runaways or begging into the marriage hall. Evidence indicates more suspects are involved in the crime, and police are searching for them, Daraz said.
Earlier this year, federal investigators arrested two men on suspicion of links to an international child pornography network.
Investigations in that case revealed that one of the men was posting child pornography videos on the dark web.
Child abuse is not uncommon in parts of Pakistan, where parliament has recently passed laws to increase punishments for those convicted of such crimes.
Last year, a resolution calling for public hanging of offenders convicted for sexually abusing and murdering children was passed in the Pakistan’s National Assembly (NA) with a majority of votes.
The resolution was presented in the parliament by Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan and passed by all lawmakers, apart from those of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).
The PPP had opposed the resolution, with former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf saying that ramping up the severity of punishments does not result in a reduction in crime.
“We cannot put public hanging into practice as it violates the laws of the United Nations,” he added, reminding members of the parliament that Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
He was not the only one to raise his voice against the passing of the resolution. Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry strongly condemned it.
“This is just another grave act in line with brutal civilisation practices. Societies act in a balanced way. Barbarism is not the answer to crimes; this is another expression of extremism,” he had said.