Child torture case: Doctors who examined girl summoned

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the panel of doctors who had conducted a medical examination of the minor housemaid who had been allegedly tortured at the residence of a sessions judge of the capital.

Justice Aamer Farooq, while issuing a notice to the witnesses for June 20, said that the court would continue the trial from where another IHC court had left it before excusing itself from hearing the case further.

Documents have revealed that the Additional District and Sessions Judge Raja Khurram and his wife Maheen Zafar, had been charged for allegedly assaulting, confining, ill-treating, neglecting, abandoning, harming and injuring the minor housemaid.
The couple, though, had pleaded ‘not guilty’ after they were indicted and are currently standing trial.

In January, a member of the medical board at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) had said it was possible that the 10-year-old housemaid was a victim of torture and abuse.

“Minor received multiple burns and other injuries to her back, face, legs and abdomen,” Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University (SZAMBU) Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Javed Akram had told The Express Tribune.

“However, it is for the police to decide whether these injuries were the result of torture or not,” he had added.

Dr Akram was part of the new medical board which had been constituted on January 6 to reexamine the child on the request of a district magistrate. Earlier, a medico-legal report from the same hospital had also confirmed the injuries sustained by the child.

However, the medical exam had ignored the burn wounds to the child’s back caused by an iron rod or ladle.

The juvenile housemaid was allegedly employed by the judge and he and his wife were accused of keeping the girl in wrongful confinement, burning her hand, beating her with a ladle, detaining her in a storeroom, and threatening her with even worse.

The gruesome story of the juvenile maid was picked up by the media after it went viral on social media on December 29. Subsequently, the police registered a case and the Islamabad High Court’s top judge also took notice and directed the registrar to initiate an inquiry.

Recently, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani during the hearing of the case had revealed that he had concluded an inquiry and found the judge to be guilty while suggesting “major punishment”. The counsel then raised objection over the single bench conducting trial and inquiry of the case and the court sent back the case to the IHC chief justice.

Subsequently, the chief justice of the IHC placed the case before Justice Farooq and he resumed the case from where Justice Kayani had left on last hearing.

The court would now take up the case on June 20.
Source:The Express Tribune: