A 26-year-old social media influencer from Taxila was allegedly gang-raped in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Haripur district by two individuals who lured her in on the pretext of a job, a police report said on Friday.
Police said the incident occurred in the district’s Khanpur tehsil on Wednesday at 8pm, adding that the victim was left on the road by the perpetrators after being subjected to sexual assault.
The victim, who is a social media influencer, stated in the first information report (FIR), a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, that she had been “contacted by the suspect through her TikTok account and offered a job at a hotel in Khanpur”.
“The suspect called me for an interview. When I reached the bus stop, they picked me up in their car and drove a few miles away, where they forced me to strip at gunpoint,” she wrote in the FIR.
She further stated in the FIR that an unknown man was driving the car, with the other suspect sitting in the front seat. The two suspects raped her and forcibly snatched her mobile phone, Rs3,000 in cash, and a gold pendant she was wearing around her neck and fled, per the complaint.
The police, after conducting a quick search, registered a case under various sections of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) on Thursday and have started an investigation on the victim’s request.
Police have lodged the FIR under sections 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 376 (punishment for rape), 392 (punishment for robbery) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation; If threat be to cause death or grievous hurt, etc) of the PPC and begun interrogation into the case.
Despite the presence of anti-rape laws — with punishment for rape either resulting in the death penalty or imprisonment of between 10 and 25 years — cases continue to prevail in the country.
Earlier this month, Hafizabad police launched raids to arrest eight suspects who allegedly abducted a couple in the district and subjected them to physical and sexual assault.
The previous month, a stage actress was gang-raped by four suspects near Nishtar Chowk, Sadiqabad.
In March, Punjab police arrested three suspects for allegedly gang-raping a woman in Lahore.
