A seventh-class student at a private college in Murree was allegedly gang-raped at gunpoint by four senior students in the hostel.
An FIR was registered with the Rawalpindi police against the perpetrators on Wednesday, according to which it was stated that four senior students at the college had showed up to the victim’s room at 1 AM with a pistol, threatening to kill him if he resisted their attempts to rape him.
The victim’s father said that he was alerted that something was wrong when his son started crying over the phone when he called him a few days back. He then brought his son back home, where he learnt what had happened to him.
The child revealed that he had gone to the principal of the college and told him what had happened. However the principal had told the child not to mention this to anyone else otherwise he would be expelled.
When the father went back to the college to speak with the principal, he claims he was held hostage and was prevented from leaving by the principal and the college staff, who also offered resistance to the police when they arrived.
The principal has denied the occurrence of any incident like this, as per a report by the BBC, but has said that he will comply with the law.
The Rawalpindi has arrested two of the accused, while the search for the remaining two is still underway. A case has also been registered against the institute for resisting police intervention by pelting police cars with stones.
The first responsibility of an institutional head has to protect children in his custody. He needs to be immediately held responsible for aiding and abetting criminal activity at this institution. Victim needs protection and perpetrators punished and put on a safeguarding register that ought to maintain records of all child molesters and paedofiles. These are predatory and repeat offenders throughout their life. So communities need protection as it is known to conceal crimes they can torture and kill their victims. In this crime if the gang realised they would be outed it would have killed the child to conceal their crime. Please act and don’t try to hush up and let communities and institutions rot.
Since it is a cadet college has any journalist asked has the military authorities taken any notice and acted to protect its reputation that’s at stake here. It ought to have robust mechanisms and safeguards.
And this happened in Cadet college and not in a private institution. Cadet colleges are managed by army