Police arrest motorway gang rape prime suspect Abid Malhi
Abid is being brought to Lahore from Faisalabad where his DNA test will be taken.
LAHORE (Dunya News) – Police on Monday apprehended prime suspect in Lahore motorway gang rape case Abid Malhi from Manga Mandi area of Lahore.
Special Assistant to Prime Minister of Pakistan on Political Communication Shahbaz Gill took to the twitter to confirm the news reports saying, “Abid Malhi has been arrested and will be punished according to law.”
— Dr. Shahbaz GiLL (@SHABAZGIL) October 12, 2020
SSP Investigation said that the prime suspect of motorway gang rape case has been shifted to CIA Model Town. He said that further investigation is underway.
The other suspect who allegedly raped the woman, Shafqat, is in jail on judicial remand. Shafqat, the accomplice of prime Suspect Abid Ali, had confessed to raping a woman on the motorway in his initial statement recorded to the police. He also confessed to committing 11 other such crimes with Abid Ali as well.
Shafqat told police that they stayed at Qila Sattar Shah the night after the Lahore motorway incident. The next day, they split up with him going to Depalpur and Abid going to his father’s house in Manga Mandi. He revealed that he had last contacted Abid three days ago. His confession comes after Shafqat’s DNA had matched with the samples collected from the crime scene.
Shafqat was arrested from Dipalpur on Sunday on the identification of alleged co-accused Waqar-ul-Hassan, who appeared at CIA police station in Lahore’s Model Town. The investigators further told that Waqar-ul-Hassan has not been found involved in the case after his DNA test report came negative.
On September 9, a woman was driving with her children on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway after midnight when her car ran out of fuel. She called a relative and the motorway police. The motorway police did not respond because the location was outside their jurisdiction. The woman was helpless and got attacked.
Unidentified assailants attacked her as she stopped her vehicle, they smashed her car window before raping her in a nearby field and robbed her of cash and jewellery. Local media reported that her children were made to watch the entire episode.
The next day the most senior police official in Lahore, Umer Sheikh, appeared in front of the media and implied that she had been partly to blame.
Hundreds took to the streets after Lahore Police Chief Umar Sheikh, the lead investigator of the case, rebuked the woman for driving down the motorway late at night without a man accompanying her.
He added no one in Pakistani society would “allow their sisters and daughters to travel alone so late”. Since the victim is a resident of France, Sheikh suggested she “mistook that Pakistani society is just as safe”.
His comments were widely condemned and sparked demands for his immediate resignation. Pakistan’s Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari called his remarks “unacceptable”. “Nothing can ever rationalise the crime of rape,” she said.
“For an officer to effectively blame a woman for being gangraped by saying she should have taken the GT Road or question as to why she went out in the night with her children is unacceptable & have taken up this issue,” Mazari tweeted.
