A sessions court has sentenced two men to life imprisonment for raping a teenage boy. Muhammad Arif, alias Tunga, and Shahbaz, alias Chabba, were found guilty of subjecting a 15-year-old boy to sexual abuse in a vehicle within the jurisdiction of the Baloch Colony police station on the night between January 15 and 16, 2022.
Additional Sessions Judge (South) Abdul Zahoor observed that in the present case, “the evidence against the accused is clear, cogent, and conclusive, forming a seamless web that leaves no room for any reasonable doubt.”
“The chain of circumstances, from abduction to escape, from medical examination to the recovery of the vehicle, is so complete and interlinked as not to leave any reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused. For the foregoing reasons, I am of the view that the prosecution has successfully proved its case against both accused beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt,” he ruled.
The court awarded rigorous imprisonment for life to the convicts for committing offence punishable under the Section 375-A (gang rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). It also handed five-year imprisonment to them for the offence punishable under the Section 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person) of the PPC.
The court ordered the accused to pay a collective fine of Rs100,000 each or undergo additional imprisonment on default. “Both the conviction awarded to both accused would run concurrently,” it added.
According to the prosecution, on the night between January 15 and 16, 2022, the accused in furtherance of their common intention abducted the boy, aged 15 years, in a vehicle from Alam Centre, Mehmoodabad No 6, and subjected him to sodomy.
Advocate Bahzad Akbar of the Legal Aid Society, who represented the complainant, contended that the testimony of the victim was natural, confidence-inspiring and sufficient for conviction particularly because he was a minor victim of sexual violence and the offence stood proved through direct ocular account corroborated by medical findings.
He said that the abduction itself showed preparation and intention to commit sexual assault and therefore the offences of kidnapping and rape were interconnected. The counsel argued that after the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2021, sodomy fell within the legal definition of rape and where more than one offender participates, the act constituted gang rape, adding that though charge included the Section 377 of the PPC, the proven facts legally amounted to gang rape under the amended law and that the court was empowered under the sections 236 and 237 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) to convict for the appropriate offence even if the charge was framed differently.
In his statement, accused Arif denied the allegations, claiming that he was shown to the victim at the police station prior to the identification parade. The other accused, Shahbaz, claimed that he was implicated in the case over refusal to pay money.
