ISLAMABAD: Five men have been arrested on charges of assaulting four women, stripping them naked and filming them in a marketplace in Faisalabad this week, police in Pakistan’s Punjab province said on Tuesday.
The incident of public assault comes just days after a Muslim mob lynched and burnt the body of a Sri Lankan factory manager in the city of Sialkot over accusations he had committed blasphemy.
Punjab Police said on Twitter two of the suspects were arrested on Monday night and three on Tuesday. The arrests came after videos of the men stripping and beating the women went viral on social media, prompting Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar to take notice.
Inspector General Punjab “is pursuing a zero tolerance policy on incidents of violence and harassment against women and children,” the tweet said.
A first information, or police, report (FIR) has been registered against four named suspects, according to the Dawn newspaper including Saddam, the owner of a shop called Usman Electric Store. Another 10 unidentified suspects are also mentioned in the report.
The suspects have been charged under sections 354-A (assault or use of criminal force against a woman and stripping her), 509 (insulting modesty or causing sexual harassment), 147 (punishment for rioting) and 149 (unlawful assembly guilty of an offence committed in prosecution of common object) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
According to the FIR as quoted by Dawn, the complainant, a woman garbage collector, went to Bawa Chak Market with three other women to collect garbage on Monday at around 10:30am. The woman said the group entered Saddam’s store and asked for water but the owner started screaming at them and saying they had entered with the intent to commit robbery. The other suspects entered the shop on hearing the ruckus, Dawn reported, and subsequently started beating up the women. They then stripped them naked and dragged them through the market.
"They continued to beat us for around an hour and made our videos in naked condition," the FIR quoted the complainant as saying.
The suspects only let the women go when their family members arrived at the market and passersbys gathered, pleading that the women be set free.
"The suspects committed gross injustice by stripping us, dragging us through the market and torturing us and strict action should be taken against them," the complainant said in the FIR.
Violence against women in Pakistan, including rape and domestic abuse, are common in Pakistan.
In 2018, a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of about 550 experts said Pakistan was the sixth most dangerous and fourth worst in terms of economic resources and discrimination for women as well as the risks women face from cultural, religious and traditional practices, including so-called honor killings. Pakistan also ranked fifth on non-sexual violence, including domestic abuse.
