Man handed down 10-year imprisonment in rape case

A sessions court has sentenced a man to 10-year imprisonment for raping a teenage girl.

Faryad was found guilty of sexually abusing his friend's sister, said to be aged between 13 and 14 years, at her home in the Urdu Bazaar area in April 2023.

Additional Sessions Judge-III (South) Ashraf Hussain Khowaja pronounced his order after recording evidence and final arguments from both the defence and prosecution sides.

He ruled that the prosecution had successfully proved the charge on the accused, sentencing him to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. The convict was also ordered to pay a Rs100,000 fine or else undergo an additional six-month imprisonment.

The judge observed that he had taken a lenient view while awarding sentence to the convict because he was young and the first time offender. He, however, acquitted the convict's brother, Shahzad, of the charge of abetting the crime.

The state prosecutor had argued that on April 11, 2023, Faryad sexually abused the minor girl at her home in the Urdu Bazaar area after the co-accused Shahzad deceitfully took her mother to a clinic for treatment, leaving the girl alone and thereby helping his brother to commit the crime.

Advocate Bahzad Akbar of the Legal Aid Society, who represented the complainant, contended that the medical and circumstantial evidence corroborated the prosecution version. Moreover, the victim in her statement fully implicated the accused, the counsel said, pleading with the judge to punish the accused for assaulting the minor.

In her testimony, the victim deposed that she was at her home along with her younger brother and mother when Shahzad called her mother on phone and asked her to accompany him to a nearby clinic for he was sick. Therefore, her mother went to hospital with Shahzad, she recounted, adding that thereafter, Faryad came at their door but her neighbour asked him to come when her mother is at home.

She testified that Faryad went away but returned 10 minutes later. Her younger brother opened the door as she was busy in cleaning the house, she said and added that he took her to the room and locked the door from inside and raped her.

An FIR was lodged under the sections 376 (rape) and 109 (punishment for abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) at the Arambagh police station.