Blog: Who cries in Pakistan for 5-year-old raped in Lahore?

Lahore: Recently, there have been protests over the rape of a five-year-old in Lahore. The girl was found at a hospital in Lahore in a critical condition. Doctors confirmed that she was savagely raped, several times and as a result her internal organs are severely damaged. The doctors had to immediately perform an emergency surgery to save her life and now she is undergoing reconstructive surgery.

The hair-raising incident grabbed public attention, igniting a campaign spearheaded by the media and rights activists to combat sexual violence against children.

Despite the intense media pressure and the strong condemnation by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the police remained clueless. So now the case has been handed to a joint investigating team, comprising of IB, ISI and Lahore CIA. But Hina Jilani, a rights activist says that it is very rarely that the rapists are ever arrested, let alone prosecuted.

"The problem lies with the investigation. On the one hand there is no commitment for investigation in our investigating authorities but on the other there is very little skill. In the case for rape, it will not happen in the public space and so the gathering of witnesses, to which our investigators limit their investigation, is not always useful in such cases. Just recently the Council for Islamic Ideology has said that use of DNA evidence in rape is not Islamic. Now these kinds of foolish and unwise trends will make the situation more worse, because that is one of the most effective methods of proving rape against somebody," said Hina.

Rights activist say it is more difficult to investigate child rape cases, because children are vulnerable victims and the trauma makes it difficult for them to identify the perpetrators.

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There has been a drastic increase in child rape cases with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reporting 113 such incidents of rape just this year in Lahore alone. But in a conservative society where rape is a taboo, the protests have been small.

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