A poor Hindu labourer whose teen daughter was brutally gang-raped and murdered by three men in a remote region in South Punjab over a week ago is struggling for justice for his dead daughter, sources said.
“The body of Karishma Devi, 17, was found on the bank of a canal on Oct 4, hours after she went missing from her home in the Qasim Wala Bangla area in Cholistan desert. Postmortem has confirmed that the girl was gang-raped and murdered and the police have arrested three nominated accused.
“However, Devi’s father Krishan Chand is not satisfied with the police investigation,” Advocate Lazar Allah Rakha told Kross Konnection.
Advocate Rakha said that though the police registered the FIR [First Information Report] of the incident on Oct 5, its investigation against the nominated accused – Mujahid aliad Mujji, Muhammad Amir, and Muhammad Mushtaq – was lackluster.
“Krishan Chand believes that local politicians and notables of the area are influencing the police investigation in favour of the accused. This is sheer injustice with the victim’s family but we will not rest till Devi’s murderers are punished in accordance with the law,” said Rakha, a human rights attorney who specialises in criminal law and has successfully defended several people accused of blasphemy.
According to the victim’s father, Devi was kidnapped while she went to relieve herself in the desert during the late hours of the night on Oct 3. Tragically, the young girl’s lifeless body was discovered near the Bhutta Canal the next evening.
READ MORE: The plight of non-Muslim women in Pakistan
The girl’s father alleged that his daughter was gang-raped by four men. He identified the suspects and nominated three of them in the FIR registered under sections of rape and murder with the Derawar Police Station.
He alleged that the accused had abducted, gang-raped, and killed his daughter because he had stopped them from being around his hut.
GANGRAPE, MURDER SHOCK COMMUNITY
This incident adds to the growing concern over the forced conversion, rape, and forced marriages of Hindu women in Pakistan, sparking international outrage. The atrocities against religious minorities within Pakistan are discriminatory and do not receive enough international attention.
Shockingly, within the first two months of 2023, at least 42 cases of atrocities against Hindus were reported in regional news channels across Pakistan. These incidents include abductions, gang rapes, and forced conversions among other horrifying crimes.
According to advocacy group Voice of Pakistan Minority, in January alone, there were six cases of abduction, forced conversion, and marriage reported in local media, with an additional five such cases occurring in February. The list further reveals that at least nine cases involved the grim discovery of Hindu victims found hanging, and at least four cases were classified as murder.
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