Man sentenced to 10-year imprisonment for raping minor cousin

Karachi: Observing that an out-of-court settlement has no legal value in the rape cases, a sessions court has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison for raping his minor cousin in Karachi's Lyari area.

Zain had been accused of sexually abusing his five-year-old cousin within the jurisdiction of the Kalri police station in March 2020. The families of both the perpetrator and the victim have been living together in a joint family set-up in the same building.

The incident came to light when the child complained of pain in her private parts to her aunt, after which she was taken to a hospital where doctors confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted.

An FIR was lodged under the Section 376 (punishment for rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) on the complaint of the victim's father. The accused in his statement recorded before a judicial magistrate confessed to having committed the heinous crime. However, he was later pardoned by the victim's father at a Jirga.

Additional Sessions Judge (South) Ashraf Hussain Khowaja convicted the accused of sexual assault and sentenced him to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and also imposed a fine of Rs100,000 on him. The judge observed that since the offence of rape was non-compoundable, the complainant's act of forgiving the accused was of no legal effect.

The judgment came after the Sindh High Court (SHC) remanded the case back to the trial court with a direction to decide it again after recording testimony of the minor victim.

In December 2022, the sessions court had awarded 10-year-imprisonment to the convict. He later filed an appeal in the SHC against his conviction and after hearing the appeal, the high court sent the case back to the trial court.

In his fresh judgment, the judge said the victim was called to give her testimony in pursuance of the high court's direction but she was incapable of doing so. "Keeping in view her tender age, some formal questions were put to her in order to ascertain her capability to record evidence, but in view of the answers given by her, it transpired that she was not capable to record evidence," he remarked.

The judge said the prosecution witnesses, including the victim's father, aunt and other family members, fully supported the version she had narrated to them after the incident, adding that medical evidence also corroborated the prosecution story.

Legal Aid Society's lawyer Behzad Akbar Gabol, who along with senior counsel Basam Ali Dahri represented the complainant, told The News that the victim's father, aunt and other witnesses were reluctant to record their testimonies after an out-of-court settlement was reached with the accused but he somehow managed to convince them to do so, adding that they were also seemingly unwilling to present the victim before the court for testimony, due to which she could not be examined previously.

However, she was later produced during the retrial but could not testify apparently because of the trauma she had gone through.

The accused also retracted his confessional statement claiming that it was extracted under torture. He alleged that he was framed in the case because of a property dispute between his father and the victim's father.

The judge, however, noted that the magistrate had fulfilled all legal formalities before and after recording the accused's confessional statement, adding that his claim about the property dispute also remained unproven.

In his testimony, the victim's father said that on the request of his relatives, he had pardoned the accused at a Jirga. To a query, he told the judge that the accused's family had admitted the fact that the accused was guilty.