IG Punjab refuses to defend CCPO Lahore's remarks regarding Motorway incident

Stressing that in no way the victim can be blamed for the motorway rape incident,  Inspector General (IG) Punjab Inam Ghani on Saturday refused to defend the victim-blaming comments by Lahore Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Umar Sheikh on the Lahore motorway rape incident.

“[A] guard cannot tell the owner of the house to protect their belongings themselves", he asserted.

Meanwhile, provincial Law Minister Raja Basharat also termed the CCPO’s statement 'inappropriate' and maintained that he does not approve or agree with whatever the CCPO had earlier said.

On Tuesday night, two suspects had gang-raped a woman who got stranded with her children on the newly constructed Lahore-Sialkot motorway.

The woman, along with her two children, was driving to Gujranwala in her car when she was forced to stop at the Gujjarpura section of the motorway after running out of fuel at around 1:30am.

She immediately called a relative for help and sent him her location. The relative asked her to also dial the Motorway Police helpline 130 from which she received no help as the area was not in its jurisdiction. Calls to other departments also went unanswered.

In the meantime, two robbers approached the car, broke the window, and took the woman and her children to the nearby bushes where they raped her repeatedly in front of the children. They also snatched her purse carrying Rs100,000 in cash, one bracelet, car registration papers, and three ATM cards. 

CCPO Lahore lands in hot water over victim-blaming remarks

The Lahore police chief landed in hot water on Thursday after he seemingly put the blame of the Lahore motorway gang-rape incident on the victim. In his remarks to news channels, the CCPO wondered why the woman took the route she chose to travel and said that she should have checked her petrol tank before getting on the said route.

The CCPO is leading the investigation of the gruesome incident.

Talking to Dunya News on the matter, Sheikh had said that the woman had left Lahore's Defence area at 12:30am for Gujranwala.

"I am surprised that a mother of three, a lone driver [...] after leaving Defence should have taken the straight route from GT Road — a generally well-populated area," he had said.

The CCPO had said that the victim should have "at least" checked her car's fuel tank before getting on the route as there is no petrol pump along with it.

The remarks added fuel to the nation's outrage, with calls for the CCPO growing stronger as people reacted to his seeming callousness towards the victims of the grave crime.