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, revealed a report by an NGO working on child protection, Sahil.
The Sahil’s report “Cruel Numbers” compiled cases reported from four provinces of Pakistan and included Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and Gilgit Baltistan (GB), reported Express Tribune.
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.
Earlier, a nine-year-old disabled child was found raped and murdered in Karachi’s Korangi area.
The police have arrested two people for investigation.
In another incident, a six-year-old girl was found raped and murdered in the Bin Qasim area, Karachi.
According to the medical examination, the girl was brutally raped and then murdered. The girl’s body was recovered from a drain near National Highway.
In 2018, the gruesome murder and rape of six-year-old Zainab Ansari in Kasur, Punjab, shook the nation, leading to widespread protests.
Zainab went missing on January 4th, 2018, and her body was found five days later in a heap of trash. The six-year-old was raped and tortured before being strangled to death.
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.
