Pakistan: Two Hindu sisters raped at gunpoint in Punjab
Two teenage Hindu sisters were allegedly raped by two men in Pakistan's Punjab province, the police said on Saturday. According to the cops, the incident occurred at Fort Abbas town, 300km from Lahore, in the Bahawalnagar district of Punjab province on June 5. However, the matter came to the fore only recently. The accused men have been identified as Umair Ashfaq and Kashif Ali.
Officials told PTI that the two sisters came out of their house at Fort Abbas in the morning to attend the nature's call in a nearby field when the two men allegedly held them at gunpoint. The two men, Ashfaq and Ali, then allegedly raped them and fled the scene, they said. The medical examination of the girls also confirmed rape.
As per local reports, the matter was registered by the police three days after the incident took place. Some influential people in the area reportedly wanted to settle the matter with the victims' family amicably, officials claimed. They told PTI that one of the accused Ali reportedly belongs to an influential family in the area.
As per Irshad Yaqoob, the area's police official, an FIR has been registered against the two men on the complaint of the girls' father. He further said that alleged rapist Ashfaq has been arrested while the other had secured a pre-arrest bail from the court.
The latest incident comes just weeks after the alleged gang-rape of a woman on a moving train stirred outrage in Pakistan and brought attention to the country's abysmal track record of women's safety and rights. Three men were accused of raping the woman, a 25-year-old mother of two, while she was traveling from Karachi to Multan in Pakistan's Punjab province.
