Saturday, September 28, 2013

Pakistan: Death penalty for rapists

Just a few days after the reported rape of a minor girl in Lahore who was abandoned in front of the Emergency Ward of a local hospital. Despite hectic efforts, police is yet to resolve the mystery of the rape of a five-year old minor. In the meanwhile on September 26, two more young girls of 14-15 years had been found dead near Madan Chak on the outskirts of a village in Gujranwala—an industrial city just 63 kilometers away from the provincial capital of the Punjab. The findings of the preliminary medical examination carried out by the District Headquarters Hospital Gujranwala suggest that the victims had been subjected to sexual abuse. On the same day, a body of a teenaged schoolgirl was also found on Karachi’s Seaview beach. The autopsy report of the girl revealed that she was “sodomized”. In a strong religious society that Pakistan has been, frequent occurrences of such heinous crimes against minor girls depict a sad and worrisome picture of the deteriorating morale of the youth across Pakistan. Reasons for the moral decline may be many but the prime factor that drives youth crazy to execute their cowardice act of molesting children is the general belief that playing with honour of a minor is an easiest way to take revenge from their strong and powerful rivals. Secondly, in Pakistan we all know that it is relatively ease to exploit the existing loopholes in the judicial and police investigations systems to escape punishment of this crime. Without going into any controversial debate on existing flaws in the evidence collection in the rape cases—be it is unleashed on minors, young girls and the dead women-- the Pakistan government should undertake changes in the existing justice procedure. Secondly, parents and heir of the rape victims often fail to go through the cumbersome judicial procedure to seek justice for the innocent victims. Thus to curb this menace, all such cases should be registered the state versus the accused and police and courts should be given time stipulation to dispose of the rape cases failing which a strict action against the two should also be incorporated in the law so that no one can dare to hush up such crimes in future. The Islamic laws suggest stone to death punishment for Zina. Hence the courts must not hesitate for a second to award the same to the rapists. Of late in India has set this precedent of awarding death sentence to the rapists. To save total disgrace of the entire society, Pakistan too should follow the suit to nip this evil. These beasts deserve no right to go escort-free after committing such crimes.

No comments: