Malik M Aslam Awan
STATE has endeavoured to its utmost to enact exemplary laws to thwart the menace of sexual assaults on women and children but despite all this law making sincerity, we see an alarming rise in cases of child abuse and sexual assault against women. Lawmakers were no doubt sincere to the core of their heart to have enactment to save the society from this heart rendering crime. After being victim of a sexual assault it is heart breaking for the family and the victim to come to fore and report officially that she is a victim of sexual assault because in our societal structure so many issues may suddenly crop up and the piercing eyes will hit hard on the skull of the victim as if so many bullets have been fired to smash her down. Societal behavior is surely to make her realize that after being a victim of sexual assaults, she has become an alien to societal norms and habitat. She will have to face vandal queries and questions to prove her complaint. Despite the fact that sufficient coherent forensic material is available to substantiate the occurrence of crime, it is a dilemma with the nation that police and prosecution don’t take care to substantiate the case for further procedure of justice.
Due to the failure and delay in prosecution a vendetta is likely to occur between the families of victim and offenders, which may cost the loss of dozens of lives from both sides. Such potential factors make victim and her depressed family to keep themselves tight lipped and in this way a lot of heinous crimes are nipped in the bud, but for the time being, which later on have to incur a heavy cost in the ensuing family feuds. Law making authorities must go deeper in rumination to thwart trend of punching questions from the victim by the investigation officers. Such deportment from I.Os must be discouraged and investigation must be forensic based instead of haphazard fidget questioning and venom. Investigation officers who subvert the forensic material are liable to severe punishments. Law makers are required to be alive to the fact that unreported cases are alarmingly increasing and climbing the unfettered peak, which is lethal to the very texture of Islamic society. Transitory decrease of cases doesn’t connote that the grip of law has suffocated the sexual crimes, the same is due to unreported cases. A pent up wrath is more dangerous than an earthquake or a volcano. We need to secure our existing and next generations instead of making the children and woman vulnerable to sexual assaults.
Habitual criminals are always well trained and plan before the commission of crime and prepare defamation material to entangle the young innocent girls in different trapping nets to make them helpless and then enslave the young girls, in so many false and obnoxious cases to meet their nefarious motives. It has been observed that the off springs of families harbouring perversed cults and self styled dogmas make the young girls and students to have silver lining dreams and abduct these girls and make them a victim of brutal sexual assaults for months and after satiating their sexual thrust, sell these girls in brothels or guest houses which are in number of thousands only in provincial metropolitan and in uncounted figures in other cities of Punjab. Sexual wolves hurt the body and soul of these ill-fated girls. Law is often helpless before sexual wolves because with the help of black sheep of investigation agencies, so many barricades are created in the way of promulgation of punishment laws and ultimately sexual wolves are rescued by black sheep of police department. Sexual assaults are often committed by affluent young or old ones under the intoxication of wealth power. Families badly hit by poverty cannot bear the heavy expenses of veteran lawyers and law proceedings. Being disheartened the victim girls and families migrate and find safe habitat for them elsewhere and lead the rest of their life in anonymity under the well presumed notion that there is no safe place to lead the honourable and peaceful life in Pakistan.
Well to do families leave their home territory forever and migrate towards countries where there is supremacy of law and order. State and law organs are required to close their heads to eradicate the menace of sexual assaults from the very fabric of a country created in the name of Islam and the professed belief and pious intent of creation of special commissions and special courts are the need of the hour to curb the alarming rate of sexual assaults. All sexual assaults cases are required to be dealt with a special commission comprising well reputed and expert law officers. Such a commission should be saddled with the responsibility to collect carefully all coherent forensic material and substantiate the case accurately so that there may not be a chance that an innocent person is involved and punished. State should provide the victims free of cost a panel of expert counsels whose integrity and proficiency should be above board.
We will have to make our society free of sexual crimes otherwise we should remember the punishment faced by the Quom-e-Loot (AS). Earthquakes and calamites are warnings from Allah Almighty, and when a nation pays deaf ear to Allah’s warnings then there may be the same punishment as faced by the Quom-e-Loot (AS). The pious angels of Allah Almighty asked Hazrat Loot (AS) to immediately quit their abode and go out not to see back. Angels erased the whole abode of that Quom lift that slice of land to countless heights and threw that down to earth and the whole Quom of Loot (AS) was turned into non entity within no time, which is a memorable lesson to the nations to come till the doomsday.
—The writer is freelance columnist based in Lahore.
