Drugs, porn movies, prostitution blamed for rise in child abuse cases in Kasur

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Ombudsman has blamed drugs, prostitution and pornographic movies for the rising incidents of child abuse in Kasur district of Punjab.

According to the Ombudsman report, 272 cases of abortions have been reported in Kasur during the past 10 years. In 2008, the abortion rate was 6.2 per cent, which jumped to 16.2 per cent in 2018.

The report further says that there have been 272 cases of child abuse, but in only 2.6 per cent cases the culprits have been punished.
Surprisingly, an overwhelming majority of culprits – 92 per cent to be precise – were educated people, while parents and relatives of most victims – 70 per cent to be precise – were either illiterate.

The report has cited a number of reasons for the rising incidents of child abuse in Kasur. However, mostly the culprits use political or tribal influence or bribe the police to hush up the cases.

The report says that local landlords and politicians backed the culprits in most cases by putting pressure on the parents of the victims to stop pursuing the charges or withdraw the cases.

The report further states that it has always been a difficult task to bring the culprits to justice in child abuse cases in Kasur. It has also referred to lack of protection to witnesses in such cases and negative role of local lawyers.

According to the report, there had been 4,139 child abuse cases in 2017. Of which 1,089 cases had been reported in Punjab alone.

Rape and murder of eigh-year-old Zainab in Kasur had rocked the joint conscious of the nation last year.

The child was kidnapped on January 4 from near her aunt’s house in Kasur. Her body was discovered five days later from a garbage heap. The postmortem report revealed that she had been raped and murdered.

Main suspect Imran Ali was convicted of raping and murdering Zainab and other minor girls by the high court.

Source: The Express Tribune