Rape of five-year-old: SC flays police over poor performance

LAHORE: The Supreme Court on Thursday expressed dissatisfaction with the police report compiled for the September 2013 case of the rape of a five-year-old girl who was left outside Lahore's Ganga Ram, DawnNews reported. Moreover, the court rejected the police report and directed the police personnel to submit a detailed report of their performance in relation to the incident. The two-member bench headed by Justice Mian Saqib Nisar and Justice Umar Ata Bandial was hearing the suo motu case in the Supreme Court's Lahore registry. According to the report submitted by Punjab police, over 400 suspects were arrested during the investigation period but later released due to a lack of evidence. The chief justice expressed disappointment over the police's failure to arrest the culprit despite nearly one year into the crime. In an incident of cruelty that shocked the nation, unidentified persons raped a five-year-old girl and threw her outside a teaching hospital in the wee hours of September 13, 2013.. A watchman who found the girl unconscious with blood stains on her clothes moved her to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. Doctors at the hospital examined her and confirmed that she had been ‘raped’ repeatedly for more than an hour. They said her condition suggested that her tormentors were more than one. Daughter of a Wapda employee, the girl was playing with her three-year-old cousin outside her Ghosia Colony, Mughalpura, residence when she went missing. The kidnapper(s) threw the girl on the green belt outside the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and the boy near the Services Hospital. A traffic warden who found the boy weeping outside the Services Hospital took him to the office of a private TV channel and then to the Child Protection Bureau. Doctors at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital immediately referred the girl to the Services Hospital for surgical intervention due to some medical conditions of a serious nature she had developed during the ‘forced rape’. Despite the passage of several months and numerous claims of breakthroughs, the Punjab police have been unable to trace culprits involved in the heinous crime. Taking suo motu notice of the assault, Chief Justice of Pakistan that time, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry sought a report from the chief of Punjab police.