Pakistani officials have initiated an investigation into allegations that a gang of men sexually abused more than 200 children and sold videos of the abuse.
The accusations have rocked Pakistan, drawing the attention and condemnation of human rights activists and politicians in a case that involved subjects long considered taboo in the nation.
At least 280 children under the age of 14 from three villages in eastern Punjab Province were said to have been subjected to sexual abuse by a gang of 15 men, who made videos to extort money from the children and their parents. Seven of the accused have been arrested, police officials said on Sunday.
Photo: Reuters
The accusations of abuse started trickling out last month as victims began to report it to the police, and on Tuesday hundreds of residents staged a protest, accusing the police and local politicians of protecting the gang members and ignoring the accusations. Some of the protesters clashed with the police, and dozens of people were injured, including several police officers.
On Saturday, details of the abuse were carried by the Nation, a Lahore-based English-language newspaper, which reported that the gang members had drugged and intoxicated their victims, some as young as six, and had recorded hundreds of videos. Some of the children stole jewelry and money from their parents to pay the men to stop them from making the videos public, according to the reports.
The newspaper said many of the videos were sold to buyers and pornographic Web sites overseas.
The coverage prompted an outpouring of outrage on social media, especially on Twitter.
However, provincial officials in Punjab played down the scale of the abuse and said that only seven cases had been registered by the police so far and that they were in possession of only 30 videos.
Most of the victims and suspects are from Hussain Khan Wala, a dusty village in the Kasur District of Punjab Province, near the border with India and about one hour’s drive from Lahore, the provincial capital.
“This group was active since 2007 when they were school students,” Shahzad Sultan, a senior police official said on Sunday, referring to the suspects.
He said most of the videos involved consensual sex between teenagers.
Police said the allegations became public only after a land dispute arose between rival groups in the village.
Sultan said that the videos of consensual sex were being used now by one party in the dispute to discredit or intimidate members of the other group with accusations of child abuse.
“The videos are old,” he said.
The man identified as the main suspect, Haseem Amir, said in an interview that his uncle had bought the land under dispute now and that members of another family who opposed the sale were now accusing him and his friends of child abuse.
The seven suspects who were arrested are between16 and 25.
Amir, 25, denied that he was involved in blackmail and extortion.
“We made some mistakes while we were teenagers in school,” he said, alluding to the sex videos.
“We used to record videos and share with one another just for fun,” Amir said.
However, Muhammad Ashraf, the father of one of the accusers, who filed a police complaint on Sunday, said his son, 20, was abused as a student five years ago, but did not tell the family at the time.
After video clips surfaced about two months ago, “we came to know about it,” Ashraf said.
He said his son “used to steal money and some valuables, and says he used to give it to the blackmailers.”
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS