20-year-old held captive, raped for two days

A 20-year-old woman missing since March 27 was found to have been kidnapped and raped by her houseowner and his friend, on Thursday.

According to SHO Surjani Town Sub Inspector Aslam Shah the friend of the houseowner, identified as Jahangir, has been arrested; the owner of the house was identified as Nadeem.

The woman went missing from her house in Yousaf Goth, Surjani Town three days ago and was found unconscious outside her house on March 29.

Taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital by her brothers, the girl informed of her ordeal after she regained consciousness. Medico-legal examination of the 20-year-old confirmed that she had been subjected to sexual assault.

The SHO told The News that the woman’s father, Muhammad Yousaf, informed the police that his daughter was raped by their houseowner after she was kept in two days’ captivity.

An employee of the Chippa Welfare Organisation, Yousaf in his statement maintained that the family was living on rent in the house of man named Nadeem, the SHO added.

“Yousaf claimed that Nadeem and his wife Sonia called my daughter to help with cooking but they later knocked her unconscious with chloroform,” SHO Shah stated.

The father further told the police that his daughter was later taken to an unknown location.

“I was out of the house on March 29 when my son informed me that my daughter was found lying unconscious in the street,” Yousaf claimed. “It was after regaining conscious at the ASH that she identified Nadeem and his friend, Jahangir, as her rapists.”

As per War Against Rape (WAR) programme officer Sheraz Ahmed, “In 2016, 340 cases of rape and sexual assault were reported in the city.”

“The number of incidents and details of victims were gathered by the WAR itself with the help of its staff deployed at the ASH, Civil Hospital Karachi and the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre,” Ahmed added.

He observed that the Sindh government had given the police department the budget to do the needful after the bill declaring DNA tests mandatory in rape investigations was passed in the provincial assembly, but no DNA tests were being conducted by MLOs.

“As per the bill, rape cases would be decided in three months so as to for the victim to get quick justice, but not a single case has been decided so far, even though six months have lapsed since the bill was passed,” he added.