Three men are said to have lured a college student to a riverbank in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area with the goal of sexually abusing him. Instead, as Dawn reported, they managed to film the child in his undies and used the clip as a kind of blackmail.
The Pakistan Penal Code’s sections 377 (unnatural offence), 511 (attempting to commit offences punishable by imprisonment), and 506/34 (criminal intimidation) were invoked in the initial complaint filed at the Dandai police station in Bisham Tehsil.
According to the FIR, the victim, who had just completed his intermediate examination, was approached by the suspects, whom he knew. They purportedly persuaded him to accompany them to a riverbank, where they made unwanted sexual advances. Despite the victim’s resistance, they recorded him unclothed and threatened to expose the footage and harm him if he reported the incident, as per Dawn.
Muhammad Arif Khan, the Station House Officer (SHO) of Dandai, revealed that the three suspects mentioned in the FIR were apprehended, with further interrogation underway.
The FIR also stated that the victim was referred to the tehsil headquarters hospital in Bisham for a medical examination on the day of the incident, Dawn reported.
Data compiled by Sahil, an NGO dedicated to addressing child sexual abuse, highlights a troubling pattern: the majority of perpetrators are individuals known to the victims, including acquaintances, neighbors, or even family members. Alarmingly, religious instructors and clerics are identified as the primary offenders within institutional settings, surpassing police officers, school teachers, or nuclear family members in the number of complaints lodged against them, according to Dawn.
While primary data is limited and organizations rely on media reports and police complaints, the trend over the past two decades indicates that the gender divide of abused girls in religious schools slightly exceeds that of boys (“Cruel Numbers”).