Daily Times

A sessions court in Peshawar sentenced a private school’s principal to 105 years in prison on charges of child abuse, pornography, rape, blackmail and illicit relations.

The sentence was awarded on Tuesday by Sessions Judge Younis Khan. The convicted principal Attaullah Marwat was also fined Rs 1.4 million (m).

Marwat, a private school’s owner was apprehended after the Hayatabad police station registered a case against him on July 14, 2017 on the complaint of a male student who had accused him of sexually exploiting school children and filming them with cameras installed in school.

A trial court had framed charges against him on eight counts under the Pakistan Penal Code, including Section 354-A (stripping a woman of her clothes), 376 (punishment for rape), 377-B (sexual abuse of child), 489-C (counterfeit currency), 497 (adultery) and 509 (sexual harassment), and Sections 48 (child pornography), 50 (seducing a child) and 53 (sexual abuse) of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Act, 2010.

Marwat was found guilty of all charges and handed various jail sentences under each section. During the proceedings, 25 direct and indirect victims of Marwat recorded their statements before the police. However, it is believed that a majority of the convict’s victims had not come forward.

Reportedly, one of the charges levied against Marwat was that he had forced, coerced, persuaded and enticed female students under the age of 18 to engage in sexual activities.

Marwat was also charged with forcing, coercing and persuading female students of his school to engage in sexual activities and capturing those acts on his mobile phones and secret cameras installed in different parts of the school and storing them in USBs.

The convict had allegedly ‘on multiple occasions and habitually’ enticed and compelled multiple women of different ages to have illicit relations with him inside the school. He was also charged with sexually assaulting multiple women after issuing them death threats.

Following his arrest last year, Marwat had recorded his confessional statement before a judicial magistrate on July 19, 2017, wherein he had admitted only that he used to bring women to school for the purpose of adultery. He had argued that it was his ‘hobby’ to make videos of his sexual activities. Furthermore, he had admitted that 26 such videos were stored in his computer.

The issue had surfaced after a student of the said school had informed the police that the accused was involved in sexual exploitation of students and teachers. The student had claimed that Marwat had sexually exploited students, teachers and some women from outside the school but nobody had the courage to expose him.

The student had claimed that the school owner had also showed him a number of objectionable videos which he had recorded secretly through cameras. The complainant had said that the principal had also invited him to get involved in such acts.

According to the first information report (FIR) of the case, police had said that when they raided the school, the principal attempted to hide away two of his cell phones which contained several objectionable videos involving schoolboys. The FIR stated that Marwat had used three rooms of his school for his activities and the police had recovered several memory cards and USBs from his custody which showed Marwat sexually exploiting students including girls in various parts of the school.

Published in Daily Times, October 31^st 2018.