Assaulted girl wants jail for father
PESHAWAR, July 27: The medical examination of a minor girl recovered from an alleged brothel in Swat district has confirmed that she is about nine years old and has been criminally assaulted, say official sources.
“The examination suggests that she is between eight and nine years and her age mentioned as 13 in an earlier report by a lady medical officer was wrong,” informed an official.
The girl told a fact-finding team of an NGO, including some journalists, that she wanted her father and Ms Safia, the woman who forced her into prostitution for about two years, to be put behind bars.
“I want that they should be punished and imprisoned,” said the innocent-looking little girl, who hardly remembers her parents now.
She said that the woman used to give her medicines and told her that she wanted her to grow up at the earliest.
“I did not like those medicines and whenever I declined to take it she used to treat me harshly,” she added.
The girl looked happy in the crisis centre and said that she did not want to go back to her father. “I don’t want to go with anyone from my family members”, she told the fact-finding team.
The victim was allegedly sold by her father, Aziz Khan, a drug addict for a sum of Rs40,000 to Ms Safia in Swat almost two years back.
The girl, presently residing in the Women’s Crisis Centre, was taken to Police Services Hospital for medical examination in accordance with an order of Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan.
It is expected that the report would be submitted before the high court on Saturday.
Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan had taken suo motu notice of the issue on July 25 and had ordered that she should be shifted from a darul aman in Swat to the Women’s Crisis Centre.
The chief justice had also directed the director-general of the NWFP health services to immediately form a three-member medical board for medical examination of Miss K and submit the report in a week.
Justice Tariq Pervez has taken the notice of news clippings published in different dailies regarding the girl who was recovered from a house which the Swat police raided on July 22.
The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc) had disputed earlier medical examination of the girl conducted by a lady medical officer in Swat and appealed to the chief justice and the government to take notice of the case as her medical examination was not conducted properly.The organisation claimed that the girl appears to be nine years old, whereas the medical examination states that she was 13.
Furthermore, it was added that the lady medical officer, who conducted her medical examination, had avoided mentioning in specific terms that she was raped.
The victim told the facts finding team including representatives of Sparc that her mother had married someone else many years ago and she did not remember even her face.
“My father had fraudulently taken me away from my mother,” she said adding “he took me to Swat about two years ago on pretext of taking me to my aunt’s house.”
Instead of taking me to aunt’s house he sold me to Ms Safia.
She alleged that a person named Jaffar acted as middleman between her father and the woman.
She alleged that five or six other girls were also present in the brothel, but she was not aware regarding their whereabouts.
The FIR of the case was registered at Mingorah police station under section 13/14 of the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979.
SPARC PLEA: The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc) has requested the media not to publish photographs and identification of juvenile offenders and children who are victims of violence.
In letters sent to different papers, provincial manager of Child Protection, Aamir Hameed Mughal said that section eight of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000, prohibited publishing such information in any newspapers, journals or magazine in any form which might disclose the name, address, school or any identification or particulars which lead directly or indirectly to the identification of such child nor shall any picture of the child be published.
Mr Mughal requested newspapers not to publish the name and picture of the minor girl recovered from Swat.
Source: Dawn
Date:7/28/2007
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