KARACHI: Unidentified men “gang-raped” a minor girl, whose family was displaced by the recent floods, in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, a police surgeon who examined the child said on Tuesday.
The family of the 10-year-old survivor had taken shelter at a footpath in the upscale Clifton area after floods submerged their village in Sindh’s Shikarpur district last month, according to a police report.
The suspects lured the girl into sitting in their car by offering her ration and later dropped her back in the same locality late Sunday.
“We suspect there are more than one culprit because our findings suggest it was a brutal rape,” Dr. Summaiya Syed, the Karachi police surgeon told Arab News.
The survivor was taken to the Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Center (JPMC) in critical condition Monday evening.
“It’s horrible, it’s terrible rape. Had she not been provided treatment for one more hour, she would have died because the child was brought in a life-threatening situation and with excessive blood loss,” Syed said.
The girl was now being treated and out of danger, she added.
Asad Raza, a senior superintendent of police (SSP), said they had arrested five suspects and collected their DNA samples for examination.
“The suspects told us they had lured the girl who was begging on the road for ration,” the official said. “But they haven’t confessed to rape.”
Last month, another girl was reportedly gang-raped after she went to receive relief goods in the flood-affected Sanghar district of Sindh. According to reports, she was drugged before being raped.
At least 2,211 children were subjected to different forms of sexual and other kinds of abuse in Pakistan from January to June, Sahil, a non-profit organization working against child sexual abuse, revealed in its compilation of data from 88 national and regional newspapers this year.
Fewer than three percent of sexual assault or rape cases result in a conviction in Pakistan, according to Karachi-based advocacy group War against Rape.
