Teenage girl gang-raped on Panchayat order

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101

Nawab denies endorsing demand for girls

By Zulqernain Tahir

LAHORE, July 27: Malik Asad, Nawab of Kalabagh, told a visiting team of human rights activists and journalists that he did not endorse the surrender of girls in the Abbkhel deal.

"The complainant party had demanded 12 girls and Rs12 million in exchange for pardon for four men on the death row. Knowing this, I had refused to play the mediatory role between them. But later, on the assurance of exclusion of girls from the deal, I got the deal settled on Rs8 million", he claimed. However, the Nawab said, the complainants remained adamant and demanded at least two girls (from the families of the convicts) which was later unanimously allowed. He said the Nikah between Ata Muhammad, 80, and Waziraan Bibi, 18, and Mehr Khan, 55, and Tasleem, 16, had to remain intact till the release of the girls’ fathers from the jail.

About the Rukhsti which was arranged for July 26, he said: “It was not in my knowledge”.

The Nawab said he had invited both the tribes and the government officials on Sunday (today) to settle the issue on monetary basis alone. He said though the tribes had succumbed to the government pressure they felt more comfortable if their disputes were settled through arbitrary committees of area notables.

The Nawab refuted the allegation that he had facilitated the deal to increase his votebank in the area. He said that he had no plans to contest the October elections.

Identifying the root-cause of this custom in his area, the Nawab said three types of tribes with different caste were living here. Of them were the Awan who never compromised on anything to settle their disputes, the Khatiks were concerned with money only and the Niazis who had a tradition of exchanging girls besides money for the settlement of their disputes and quarrels. The Madi and Abbakhel tribes belonged to the Niazi caste, he said.

DIVORCE: Mehr Khan said the police had forced them to divorce the girls. He alleged that the police had tortured Ata Muhammad to sign the divorce papers. He said though they had excluded the girls from the deal under the government pressure, they would raise the issue in the Jirga on Sunday. He said that Ata had to seek Nawab’s refuge against the police harassment.

It is learnt that Ata had a quarrel with Mehr Khan over the choice of the girls for marriage. Mehr wanted to marry Waziraan, the daughter of main accused Sardar Khan.

CONVICTS: Sardar Khan, Akram Khan, Ashraf Khan and Asmatullah Khan who were sentenced to death in a double murder case in 1985, told newsmen in the Mianwali jail that a four kanal piece of land between their houses was the cause of a long enmity.

Sardar Khan said that they had been in the jail for the last 13 years and the deal was the only option left to escape the gallows. **“I personally hate to give my daughter’s hand to an 80-year-old man and not afraid of dying, but I want to save my brother and nephews.” **

Sardar said that they had deposited Rs8 million with the Nawab. He said if the deal materialized his tribe would support Nawab of Kala Bagh politically.

DIYAT: Some relatives of the girls appeared to be more interested in getting back some amount given by them as Diyat. The only educated man in the family, Ghulam Qadir, brother of Asmatullah, told Dawn that though they were happy for the timely government intervention to save their daughters from the cruel match, they would have been more happy if the government had helped reduced the deal money.

He said that they had to sell land and jewellery of their women to arrange the amount of Rs8 million.

Zafarullah, another family member, criticized the government for excluding the girls from the deal. **“People of this area do not mind exchanging their girls in such deals. It is a custom here. What matters for us is the money.” **He feared the release of the convicts might not end rivalry between the two tribes because a huge sum of money was involved.

The mother of Tasleem whose lost her left arm while cutting fodder a couple of years ago said that she was happy that the deal was intact and her husband would return home. However, she said that she suspected Ata Muhammad, the head of complainant party, to call off the deal because of his humiliation by police. She said Ata knew that their family had no hand in divorces and all this happened by the will of God. “We had handed them over our daughters but God did not want this to happen”, she added.

Tasleem, the daughter of convict Akram, said that she knew she was sacrificing for her father and could not get away with this ordeal. “However I stayed content and satisfied during the deal. I smelt a strange sense of freedom and happiness when I was informed that I was no more Mehr Khan’s wife”. she said.

**Tasleem was married to 55-year-old father of six children Mehr Khan. **

Tall and confident Waziraan, daughter of Sardar Khan, who had recently done her FA wanted to continue her studies. She was the lone sister of five brothers.

Holding tears in her eyes Waziraan said that she was hardly five when she last met her father. She said that it was her parent’s love that made her feel satisfied to marry an 80-year-old man whose grand children were of my age. Giving the example of Hazrat Ismail’s sacrifice, she said: “Whenever the idea of marrying an oldman haunted me I thought of Hazrat Ismail’s sacrifice and it gave me a great deal of strength”, she added.
http://www.dawn.com/2002/07/28/nat9.htm

[This message has been edited by Different (edited July 29, 2002).]

102

HYDERABAD: Girl assaulted in operation theatre

Bureau Report

HYDERABAD, July 27: Twenty activists of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), taluka Kotri, here on Friday staged a protest demonstration and observed hunger strike outside the press club here on Friday against the alleged **rape of a village girl , Ms ‘R’, in the operation theatre of the TB Sanatorium, Kotri, by two hospital employees a few days back. **

They raised slogans against hospital administration. The Mahaz leaders, Abdul Fatah Channa, Talib Hussain, Abdul Hadi and others, raising slogans against the hospital management, claimed that it had hushed up the matter. They demanded an impartial inquiry into the alleged rape and an immediate arrest of the accused.
http://www.dawn.com/2002/07/28/local20.htm

**DADU: Girl, youth hacked over Karo-kari **

By Our Correspondent

DADU, July 27: **A teenage girl, Amina, 18, with a young man, Manthar Ali Odhano, 20, was axed to death by her father, Ghulam Hussain Pahi, on the pretext of Karo-kari **in Mehar on Saturday.

After committing the double murder, Pahi surrendered before the Mehar police. The police have registered an FIR.

Our Larkana correspondent adds:** Two unknown armed men killed a bride in Kando village, some 60 kilometres off here, on Friday night on the pretext of Karo-kari. **

The women, **Ferzana, 17, who married with Wazeer Khoso three days back, was a resident of Kambar town where her relatives had labelled her as Kari and she was sold out for Rs100,000 to Khoso, hushing up the background. **

The armed men barged into the house of Khoso where he and his wife were asleep. After overpowering her husband, the accused shot dead Ferzana.

Khoso registered an FIR with the Warah police station under section 302/34. He said in the FIR that he came to know that his wife was a kari after their marriage.

The autopsy on the body, carried out in the CMC Hospital, Larkana, by Dr Razia Sultana, **showed that the deceased had received three bullets. **
http://www.dawn.com/2002/07/28/local23.htm

103

Gang rape trial hears sodomy charge

By Frances Harrison
BBC correspondent in Islamabad

The brother of the woman in southern Pakistan allegedly gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council has told the court **he too was raped on the same day. **

The boy, who is 12 years old, told an anti-terrorism court in the southern Punjab city of Dera Ghazi Khan that he was sodomised by a group of men in June.

He said his rapists then tried to cover up their crime by falsely accusing him of having an illicit affair with a woman from their **more powerful tribe. **

A self-appointed village council ordered his sister to be gang-raped as punishment in a case that has drawn condemnation both abroad and in Pakistan.

Fourteen men are on trial for their part in raping the woman or abetting the rape.

Outrage

So far the focus of public outrage has been on the plight of the woman.

Clan influence remains high in rural Pakistan

She has yet to give evidence, but the testimony of her brother was just as shocking.

He told the court he was asleep outside his house, when three men abducted him and gang-raped him in a sugar cane field.

He said they asked him if he would keep their crime secret, and when he said no, they beat him and locked him in a room of a nearby house.

Confined in the same room was an older woman of the same tribe as the rapists.

He said his rapists falsely accused him of being caught in a compromising position with the woman from their tribe,** to cover up the fact that they had sodomised him.**

Informal court

It was that allegation of an illicit affair with a woman of the higher status tribe which prompted the informal village court to sit.

In the presence of hundreds of people the men on the self-appointed jury decreed that the woman should be raped for her brother’s supposed crime.

Four men carried out the sentence of rape and then forced her to walk home naked in full public view afterwards.

The case attracted huge publicity and shocked Pakistani society.

Such was its impact that President Pervez Musharraf awarded the victim compensation money, which she said she would use to found a school for girls in the village.

But her brother’s equally horrific case has yet to receive as much attention.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2164281.stm

104

Yeah i agree with you on this Addu

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/ok.gif

Not sure to call ourselves Pakistani. On one hand there are freakin mullahs who are teaching all the wrong things and on the other hand we got these freakin low lives who go out and rape women.
A questin ** Who the hell is being used here? Who is being gamble here? **

Situations likes these makes me throw up..but i wanna vomit on their faces.. so holding myself till i get back to Pakistan..and at least to some jacks show where their freakin masculinity lies…

105

More abuse of women in Punjab.
http://www.dawn.com/2002/08/03/local15.htm

**Teenaged girl stripped off, beaten up

RAWALPINDI, Aug 2: A teenaged girl was stripped off, abused and beaten in the open by a local influential in Gikh Badhal village, 65kms south from here a couple of days ago, eyewitnesses said.**

District Nazim Raja Tariq Kiani, on learning about the incident, went to the village to get further details and ordered the police to help the grieved party get justice.

A local cleric told the Nazim that a couple of days ago he was sleeping in his house in the afternoon when he heard screams of a girl.**He said when he went outside, he found Misbah Naz, the daughter of Walayat, in tattered clothes, being pinned to the ground by Manazir and his wife, while their son Mulazim was kicking and punching her.

He said he had learnt that the girl had gone to the house of the accused to complain about the behaviour of their boys, who, she alleged, beat her brothers, who were below 10 years of age.

Instead of apologizing for the misbehaviour of their boys, the accused pushed the girl out of the house, where she was stripped off her clothes and continuously beaten and abused, he said. **

Walayat, the victim’s father, on seeing his daughter in such a condition was so stunned that he was unable to rescue her, the cleric said, and added that he then intervened.

The eyewitness said everyone subsequently left the scene of the incident. A few minutes later, he said, he heard the sound of fire from a carbine. On coming out of the house, he saw Mulazim’s mother injured in the leg with a bullet fire, which he was told by Manazir to have been fired by Walayat. He said he turned back to find Manazir holding the carbine in his hand, which proved that he had grievously hurt his wife to implicate Walayat’s family in an assault case so that he could not complain about the incident to the police. Later, the accused, he said, lodged a complaint against Walayat for having shot and injured Mulazim’s mother. But, since the villagers were witness to the whole incident they went to the police station and got Walayat released.

The Nazim was told that Walayat did not lodge a complaint against the accused because of fear of retaliation. The gathering was told that the accused had been committing unlawful acts in the area with impunity.

**On this occasion, an old man stood up and informed the Nazim that the same people had sodomised his son, but he too could not complain to the police because of their fear. **

Mr Kiani ordered the police to quash the false case registered against Walayat and lodge an FIR against the accused for brutalizing the girl, grievously injuring a woman with carbine fire and misleading the police. He assured the victim’s family of all assistance and warned that such illegal acts would not be allowed in the district. If the charges levelled against the accused in the FIR are proved, they might proved guilty, the accused face a possible death sentence.

[This message has been edited by RealDeal (edited August 03, 2002).]

106

Pakistan woman tells of rape ordeal
By Frances Harrison
BBC correspondent in Islamabad

A woman allegedly sentenced to gang rape by a village council in southern Pakistan has testified at a court in Punjab’s Dera Ghazi Khan town about her ordeal.

Mukhtaran Bibi gave a chilling testimony

Mukhtaran Bibi described how the four men on trial dragged her into a hut and raped her, a crime for which they may face the death penalty if found guilty.

Face-to-face with the men who are on trial for raping her, Mukhtaran Bibi described how she was asked to appear before the informal village council to apologise for the alleged misdemeanour of her 12-year old brother.

He had been accused of an illicit affair with an older woman.

He says the story was concocted to cover up the fact that he had been sodomised by three men earlier in the day and threatened to report the incident.

Walking half-naked

Mukhtaran Bibi testified that when she apologised to the council, made up of village elders in Punjab’s Muzaffargarh area, one man said she should be pardoned.

But another man suddenly stood up, Ms Bibi testified, and said she should be raped.

She described begging the council to save her, but they took no notice and four men raped her while hundreds of villagers did nothing to stop the assault.

Afterwards, Mukhtaran Bibi said she was forced to walk home half-naked in full public view, covered only with a piece of cloth.

Pakistani society shocked

For the next four days she says armed men prevented her family from leaving their home.

The case is being heard behind closed doors by a special anti-terrorism court which has been given three weeks to finish the trial.

The four men accused of rape could face the death penalty while 10 others alleged to have taken part in the illegal council that passed the sentence of rape themselves face prison sentences.

The case shocked Pakistani society, but a human rights organisation recently reported that 150 rapes have taken place in the same area of southern Punjab in the last six months alone.

** But now I have learned to listen to silence. To hear its choirs singing the song of ages, chanting the hymns of space and disclosing the secrets of eternity..
* Khalil Gibran***

107

Uff these freakin jacks. I wanna partially blame women, they should have enough strength to slap them or atleast try to save their izzat.

mera bas chaley sab ko bomb sey urha dalo Argh!!

108

Gang-raped woman thanks God for death penalty

September 01 2002 at 08:10PM

Multan, Pakistan - A Pakistani woman gang-raped by four men on the orders of a traditional village jury said on Sunday she was satisfied with the death sentences handed down to six of the men involved in the rape and in the jury decision.

A special anti-terrorism court in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab province sentenced four rapists and two of the village jurors to hang for the June 22 attack on divorcee Mukhtaran Mai, 30. Eight other men who had sat on the village jury were released.

Mai, who says her family have received death threats, was not in court when the judge gave his decision shortly after midnight. She was given the news at dawn on Sunday by a relative in her home village, Meerawali.

“God has provided justice to me,” she said. “If courts begin giving decisions like this, I am sure rapes will be reduced, if not stopped. I am satisfied with the decision.”

‘God has provided justice to me’
Mai was raped by four men after asking a traditional jury to settle a dispute with the more powerful Mastoi clan.

Mai said she went to the jury after her 12-year-old brother, Abdul Shakoor, was kidnapped and sodomised by members of the Mastoi family as a punishment for an illicit affair with one of their female relatives.

The jury ruled that to save Mastoi honour, Shakoor should marry the woman with whom he was linked while Mai was to be given in marriage to a Mastoi man. When Mai rejected the decision, she was gang-raped and made to walk home nearly naked in front of hundreds of people.

Police sent armed men to Meerawali and cordoned off Mai’s house to prevent a revenge attack. Mai said her family had been threatened with revenge if the men were convicted.

**Lawyers for the convicted men have said they are to appeal. - **Reuters

http://www.itechnology.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=ct20020901201026668G5261866&set_id=1

109

Mukhtaran elated at court verdict, but fears revenge

MEERWALA, Sept 1: Gang-rape victim Mukhtaran Mai said she was satisfied with Sunday’s court decision which saw six men responsible for the attack sentenced to death, but added she and her family were now living in fear of revenge.

Speaking to AFP at her desperately poor home village in a remote part of central Punjab province, she said the court’s verdict had further strengthened an already strong faith in God.

“I have been praying to Allah that he would grant me justice, so I feel elated. I feel my sacrifice has not been wasted,” she said.

**"On that day when I was dragged in front of 250 people I cried for help. But the spectators remained silent and when I returned home that night I was a disgraced woman.

“Then my attackers said they would kill me and my family if we disclosed the attack and we were terrified, we thought there was no hope,” Mukhtaran said.

"We are so poor we could not even afford to flee to the city. For seven days we were virtually prisoners in our own home. Those were very distressful days.

“They are still threatening us and have told us that the court decision will lead to more bloodshed,” Mukhtaran said. **

She said at first the family accepted their situation as the will of God and had resigned themselves to carry the burden of fear and humiliation for the rest of their lives.

But then, she said, journalists told her of the national outrage the incident had created. A contingent of police arrived to protect the family and slowly their courage began to rise, she added.“We are illiterate, but then we started to believe that perhaps we could get justice,” she said.

But when the trial at an anti-terrorist court (ATC) - special tribunals introduced five years ago to achieve quick justice for particularly horrible crimes - her spirits again began to sink.

**"The lawyers asked very humiliating questions. At one stage during the trial I thought of leaving the court and I thought it was worse than what happened to me in Meerwala. **

“But I faced it, thinking in my mind that the government, the police and the press people were telling the truth when they promised me that justice would be done,” Mukhtaran said.

"That hope kept me going and I was reassured by my lawyers that the humiliation would be just a temporary thing.

"I thought that if I got these people convicted, I would save my family from humiliation and that other women would perhaps not have to suffer the trauma that was inflicted on me.

“What I was subjected to should never happen to anybody.”

Mukhtaran, a 30-year-old divorcee, was raped for more than an hour on June 22 in a hut in the Punjab village near Meerwala, some 60km east of Dera Ghazi Khan, to atone for her 12-year-old brother’s alleged affair with a sister of one of the rapists.

He later claimed the alleged affair was concocted after he had been sodomised by three men from the powerful Mastoi clan.

Early Sunday morning the four rapists were sentenced to death by hanging. Two members of the tribal council (Panchayat), which sanctioned the assault, were also condemned to death. Defence prosecutors said they would appeal the convictions.

But Saturday’s expected verdict was delayed for nearly 18 hours and the tension of waiting took its toll.

"Yesterday as I waited I was praying, reading the Quran and asking Allah for justice. I waited till one o’clock in the morning. My elder brother had gone to the court, but he had not yet returned and we were really upset.

“I was so tired by then that I fell asleep. Then at 2.30am my father woke me up. I saw many policemen inside my home and they all were congratulating us,” Mukhtaran said.

“I felt elated and I immediately threw my hands towards the sky, and said ‘Thank You Allah. Justice is delivered’.”

Mukhtaran said the outcome had boosted her confidence, but that she still feared retribution, a question of honour in the often brutal traditional ways of Pakistan’s rural tribal culture.

“Of course, the fear is still there, but now we believe even more in Allah. He will protect us,” she said.-AFP

http://www.dawn.com/2002/09/02/top6.htm

110

HRCP flays tribal justice system

ISLAMABAD, Sept 1: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and the federal law minister on Sunday slammed the tribal justice system as a special court awarded death to six men in the Meerwala gang-rape case.

“It was a case that shocked the whole country and the world,” HRCP Chairman Afrasiab Khattak said.

**"This case has raised very important issues - the role of extra judicial tribunals taking the law into their own hands and handing down barbaric punishments.

“The accused have been punished, but the issue will not be over until the state takes up the larger issue of the role of feudal lords and the treatment of women in society,”** Khattak told AFP.

In an unusual midnight verdict announced by the special court in the Punjab district of Dera Ghazi Khan, six men accused of the gang-rape of Mukhtaran Mai were sentenced to death.

Two of them were members of the so-called Panchayat (jury) while eight other accused were acquitted.

Law Minister Khalid Ranjha expressed satisfaction that justice had been delivered.

**“The speedy trial in the case has established the state’s concern about such shameful offences,” Ranjha told the agency. He said:"This is for the first time in the history of the Panchayat system that members of the jury have also been punished. **

“It is a straight message that we are very firm on these issues.”

But Mr Khattak was sceptical because the convicts have a right to appeal in the high court.

http://www.dawn.com/2002/09/02/top5.htm

111

THe courage of Mukhtaran and her brother must be commended, it must take a very strong person to stand up to such jahil ppl and to testify against them. Also the imam who spoke out against it, good to know some Imams r doing their job.

This whole incidence makes me sick to the stomach.

They should prosecute the onlookers too. how can humanity be so jahil?

112

dIFFERENT & OTHER FLOWING WITH MILK OF HUMANITY ..SAVE YOUR LACTATION.:slight_smile:

SO CRIME WAS COMMITTED & HARSHEST PUNISHMENT POSSIBLE IN THE TOUGHEST OF STATE IN U.S. WITH DEATH PEPak gangrape suspects get death..IN INDIA THEY WOULD BE FREE

AS the Police Commissioneer ofBanglore SAngtiani said ,ISLAMIC JUSTICE IS THE ANSWER TIO ALL CRIMES
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1020901/asp/foreign/story_1157104.asp
Pak gangrape suspects get death

ASIM TANVEER

Chief prosecution witness Abdul Razak (second from (left) and Hazoor Baksh (right), brother of gangrape victim Mukthar Mai, at the anti-terrorism court in Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan. (AFP)
Dera Ghazi Khan (Pakistan), Aug. 31 (Reuters): A Pakistani anti-terrorism court today sentenced six men to death for gangraping a woman in Punjab province.

Defence lawyer Mohammad Yaqub told Reuters that eight other men were acquitted in the trial before a special anti-terrorism court in the Punjab town of Dera Ghazi Khan, whose proceedings have highlighted abuses against women in rural Pakistan.

Mukhtar Mai, the 30-year-old divorced victim of the June 22 crime, was not present when the court announced the decision amid heavy security. She told Reuters yesterday members of her family had been threatened with death if the men were convicted.

Yaqub said four men were sentenced to death for committing the rape and two others for serving on a traditional village jury that authorised the crime.

?The four rapists and two jurors have been given the death penalty and a fine of 40,000 rupees ($675) each. The remaining eight have been acquitted,? he said. ?We will appeal,? he added.

Yaqub named the four sentenced to death for the rape as brothers Allah Ditta and Abdul Khaliq, Fayyaz Hussain and Ghulam Farid. The two jurors were Faiz Bakhsh and Ramzan Bichar. All the eight acquitted had served on the jury.

Mai said she was raped by four men after approaching the traditional jury, or panchayat, in her home village of Meerawali in Punjab province to settle a dispute with a rival clan.

Mai said she went to the village jury after her 12-year-old brother Abdul Shakoor was kidnapped and sodomised by members of the rival Mastoi family as a punishment for having an illicit affair with one of their relatives.

Family honour

The jury ruled that to save Mastoi honour, Shakoor should marry the woman with whom he was linked, while Mai was to be given away in marriage to a Mastoi man.

The prosecution said that when she rejected the decision she was gangraped by four Mastoi men and made to walk home nearly naked in front of hundreds of people.

Yesterday, Mai told Reuters she and her family had been threatened with revenge if the men were convicted.

?We are receiving death threats,? she said. ?They have told us that if their four people are sentenced to death, they would kill eight of our men. Not only my family, but those who supported us are being threatened with dire consequences.?

Armed police units were stationed around Dera Ghazi Khan where hundreds of members of both families and their supporters had gathered for the verdict. Black-clad elite police commandos ringed the court house.

NALTY IS GIVEN…