Dubai: In a shocking incident, a woman was gang-raped in front of her kids on a highway in Pakistan.
In an even more shocking reaction, the Lahore Police chief said that the woman shouldn’t have driven down the highway at night without a man accompanying her.
People from throughout Pakistan have condemned the horrific incident and the top cops’ comment.
Police have arrested 15 people in connection with the incident, according to reports.
The woman’s car broke down on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway early in the morning. As she waited for help, a group of men smashed her window, dragged her out of the car and raped her in front of her children in a nearby field.
They also took her cash, jewellery and ATM cards.
Lahore Police chief Umar Sheikh said no one in Pakistani society would “allow their sisters and daughters to travel alone so late”. He further observed that as the victim is a resident of France, she mistook Pakistani society to be just as safe.
Pakistan’s Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari called his remarks ‘unacceptable’. “Nothing can ever rationalise the crime of rape,” she said. “For an officer to effectively blame a woman for being gangraped by saying she should have taken the GT Road or question as to why she went out in the night with her children is unacceptable. We have taken up this issue,” Mazari tweeted.
Protestors belonging to the religious group ‘Jamaat-e-Islami’ carried a banner which read, “the perpetrators of atrocities against women and children should be hanged in public” during a demonstration in Lahore.
Opposition party PML-N, too, has called for Sheikh’s resignation.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said he is ‘following the case closely’ and directed investigators to arrest and sentence those involved in the incident “as soon as possible”.
