Daily Times

Body of a seven-year-old boy – a student of grade one, been missing since Thursday- was found by locals in a pile of trash on Friday in Haripur’s Khanpur area.

Autopsy report confirmed that he was sexually abused prior to being strangled to death and therefore, FIR was registered.

While the man suspected of sexually assaulting and murdering the seven-year-old child in Khanpur, Haripur tehsil, was arrested by police yesterday, informed the sources.

In another incident, in Narowal’s Zafarwal tehsil on Thursday, a nine-year-old boy was allegedly subjected to sexual assault. Zafarwal police said that A* went out of the house to play with other children. In the meantime, Ali Raza abducted the boy and took him to a house situated a few blocks away. The culprit then allegedly raped A*. When the victim did not return home after a while, his family and people from the neighborhood started searching for the boy.

They reached the house and heard the victim’s screams coming from inside. The victim’s family and others immediately broke the door and went inside where they saw the suspect assaulting the child. The people tried to catch the accused but he managed to escape. The boy was shifted to DHQ Hospital for a medical examination. Meanwhile, the police have registered an FIR against the culprit and started investigations.

Child sexual abuse is highly prevalent both in the developing and the developed world. Though there is a scarcity of credible data, last year, a report published by the NGO Sahil revealed that 2,322 children were sexually abused across Pakistan during the first six months of 2018. Around 44% of them were boys and 56% of them girls.

In order to curb violence against children in the country, the Senate in 2016 criminalised child sexual abuse, child pornography and trafficking. Earlier, only rape was criminalised. Despite the tightening of laws, a significant number of child abuse cases go unreported. A Senate committee was informed in January this year that 300 cases of child sexual abuse were registered in Islamabad over the last five years, while another 260 cases went unregistered.