Judge enhances child molester’s sentence to 14 years

Admitting its ‘mistake’ in awarding lesser punishment to a man in a child molestation case, a court has enhanced the convict’s prison term to fourteen years.

On January 18, Umair Qadeer was convicted of assaulting an eight-year-old girl at his grocery store in Landhi in May 2022 and was sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment.

The convict challenged the judgment in the Sindh High Court, which subsequently overturned his conviction and remanded the case back to the trial court to decide it afresh after hearing arguments from defence and prosecution sides.

Announcing his judgment, Judge Ilyas A Memon of the Special Gender-Based Violence Court (East) observed that this court committed “bona fide mistake” as it awarded five-year imprisonment to the accused in view of the previous interpretation of Section 377-B (child sexual abuse) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), which stipulated a maximum of seven years’ imprisoment for such offence.

He said that the careful study of the amendment made to Section 377-B in 2018 revealed that the minimum punishment for committing offence falling under this section was fourteen years with a Rs1 million fine.

The judge, therefore, handed down fourteen-year imprisoment to the convict and ordered him to pay a fine of Rs1 million. In case of failure to pay the fine, he would have to undergo additional six months imprisonment.

The state prosecutor argued that there was abundant evidence on the record to convict the accused. She said that the discrepancies highlighted by the defense counsel were minor in nature and insufficient to raise doubts about the prosecution’s story. Furthermore, she contended that the prosecution had effectively established its case against the accused, requesting the judge to convict him in accordance with the law.

On the other hand, the defence counsel argued that the prosecution’s case had flaws, emphasising that even a single doubt ought to go in favour of the accused.