Principal awarded 105 years in jail for sexual abuse of students

PESHAWAR: A local court on Tuesday awarded three times life imprisonment to a private school owner and principal on charges of committing rape and unnatural offence, detaining married women with criminal intent and blackmailing students to force them to have illicit relations with him.

The District and Sessions Judge, Peshawar, Muhammad Younas awarded a total of 105 years imprisonment to Attaullah Marwat, principal of the private school. However, the sentence was declared as concurrent and the convict would spend life imprisonment of 25 years.

The Special Public Prosecutor Syed Nazir appeared on behalf of the state in the case. The complainant in the case was Abdul Wali Khan, the then SHO of Hayatabad Police Station in Peshawar, who raided the school premises and took action on the complaint of Mirwas Khan, father of Mir Zakeem, an ex-student of the school.

In the 24-page judgement, the court stated that the accused had confessed to his crimes through his confessional statement before the judicial magistrate. It said the prosecution produced all the recoveries made from the premises of the school that was used for commission of the offences. The accused was arrested after the Hayatabad Police Station registered a case against him on July 14, 2017 on the complaint of a boy student, who accused him of sexually exploiting schoolchildren, including girls, and filming such acts through secret cameras installed at the school campus. One of the charges against the accused was that he had forced, persuaded, coerced and enticed girl students aged below 18 years to engage in sexual acts and expose their bodies and was involved in explicit sexual conduct and abuse of minor schoolgirls. The accused was also charged with forcing, coercing and persuading girl students of his school to indulge in sexual acts and capturing the action on his mobile phones, USBs and secret cameras installed in different parts of the school. The accused had allegedly 'on multiple occasions and habitually' enticed and compelled multiple women of different ages to have illicit relations with him inside the school. He was also charged with sexually assaulting many women after obtaining their consent through death threats.

Following his arrest last year, the accused recorded his confessional statement with a judicial magistrate on July 19, 2017, wherein he admitted that he used to bring women from outside to the school for the purpose of committing adultery. He also admitted that 26 such videos that he made were stored in his personal computer.