A 13-year-old rape victim died at Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar after giving birth to a stillborn baby.
The girl was raped five months ago by a man who had taken her home on the pretext of fraud five months ago.
The victim’s mother had initially taken the girl to a lady health visitor to get the child aborted. However, the girl was then sent to the Lady Reading Hospital in critical condition. She died while giving birth.
The police registered a case against the man suspected of raping the minor girl and arrested him, Geo News reported.
In 2018, the gruesome murder and rape of six-year-old Zainab Ansari in Kasur, Punjab, shook the nation, leading to widespread protests.
Later that year, police caught 24-year-old Imran Ali for raping and murdering Zainab. Imran Ali was convicted of similar crimes against six more girls and was handed a death sentence. The convict was hanged in October 2018.
In 2020, parliament passed a new law against child abuse in the wake of Zainab’s case.
The country’s first national child abuse law introduced a penalty of life imprisonment for child abuse. The law mandates police to register a case within two hours of a child’s parents reporting them missing.
Nearly 10 cases of child abuse a day are reported in Pakistan, with girls mostly affected, according to Sahil, an organisation that works on child protection.
According to a report by an NGO working on child protection, Sahil, over 12 children were sexually abused daily in Pakistan and as many as 4,253 cases of child sexual abuse were reported in Pakistan during 2022.
According to the report, as many as 4,253 cases relating to child sexual abuse, abduction, missing children and child marriages were reported in Pakistan.
Out of the total reported cases, 2,325 victims were girls (55%) and 1,928 (45%) were boys.
2022 saw an increase of 33 per cent when it comes to the cases of child abuse from the previous year.
