KARACHI: A sessions court on Thursday sentenced a man to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for attempting to rape a minor girl in Karachi’s Manzoor Colony.
Muhammad Imran Moeed was found guilty of attempting to assault a nine-year-old girl on the rooftop of a mosque within the jurisdiction of the Baloch Colony police station in December, 2020.
Additional Sessions Judge (South) Ashraf Hussain Khawaja announced the judgement he had reserved after recording evidence and final arguments from the prosecution and defence sides.
The judge also imposed a fine of Rs100,000 on the convict and in case of failure to pay the fine, he would have to undergo additional three months of simple imprisonment. He was remanded back to the prison to serve out the sentence.
The judge observed that the prosecution succeeded in proving the charge against the accused beyond the reasonable shadow of doubt. He said the victim in her deposition narrated the facts as mentioned in her statement recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and also thoroughly supported the prosecution case, adding she also correctly identified the accused during an identification parade before a judicial magistrate.
The judge noted the accused also confessed to having committed the offence before the magistrate. He said the accused had also been booked in a similar case lodged at the Zaman Town police station in 2018 and was acquitted after the complainant of the case didn’t appear in court to testify against him, which showed that he was a habitual offender.
The victim girl testified that the accused met her while she was returning from her uncle’s shop after delivering lunch and took her to an embroidery karkhana nearby on the pretext of giving her money for her father. She said he later took her to the rooftop of a mosque where he searched for a rope and then kissed her on her cheek, after which she pushed him away and ran down.
On reaching home, the minor stated that she narrated the incident to her grandmother who accompanied her to the place of the incident but nobody was present there. The grandmother also inquired the mosque’s prayer leader about the incident but he had no knowledge of it, she added.
Advocates Basam Ali Dahri and Bahzad Akbar, who represented the complainant, stated that the victim implicated the accused in the case and also identified him as the one who tried to assault her, adding that other witnesses also corroborated her version. They argued that the offence was made out under Section 377-B (sexual abuse of a child)of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and the court had powers to convict an accused of the offences other than those mentioned in the charge-sheet. The court, therefore, was requested to punish the accused as per law.
On the other hand, the defence lawyer contended that the victim’s grandmother and Pesh Imam were not cited as witnesses, nor were those who were available at the mosque for Assr prayers. Besides, he said the FIR was lodged after a delay of 19 days without any plausible explanation and CCTV footage was also not sent to a forensic lab for examination nor was the incharge of cameras examined by the court. He pleaded with the judge to acquit his client.
An FIR was lodged at the Baloch Colony police station under sections 376 (punishment for rape and 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or for a shorter term) of the PPC on the complaint of the victim’s father.