On 4th of January 2018, when most of the rest of the world was still recovering from the fun packed nights of New Year eve, a young girl in the streets of Kasur district of Pakistan was led away by a stranger when she was going for daily Quran recital lessons. Her raped and dead body was later found on a heap of garbage on 9th January 2018. Her parents were away at that time and were performing Umrah in the holy Kabba therefore she was living with her uncle and aunt’s family.
Her name was Zainab Ansari. At the time of her rape and eventual strangulation, she was only 7 years old — an age in which the girls in the rest of the world are carefree and oblivious of the words such as rape, virginity etc. When people came out on the streets to protest against this incident, instead of offering full support to them in finding the culprits, the local police fired live rounds straight on the crowd which resulted in two more deaths. Zainab is not the first child to meet this fate. She is just one of the 8 previous girls that were raped and then strangulated to death by the same killer that had killed Zainab. Only one of his so many victims had survived.
A massive man hunt began after the incident was reported. Media reported the incident in its own way and people talked about it in their own usual fashion. Soon it was revealed that young girls are abducted, raped and murdered for the subscribers and the users of the dark web. According to Wikipedia, dark web is governed by “high level of encryption, websites are not tracked or geo-located and IP of their users are not traceable. Thus, communication between darknet users is highly encrypted allowing users to talk, blog, and share files confidentially.”
Imran Ali — an illiterate man who probably doesn’t even have a signature — was aware of the darknet. Is it surprising? Perhaps it is not so much surprising. It is because Kasur was already notorious for the events such as Kasur child sex abuse. Kasur is the same district of Pakistan where only a few years back in 2015, the country’s biggest child sex offender’s ring was surfaced. Between 2006 and 2014, an estimated 300 children mostly boys were subjected to rape, molestation and their pornographic videos were made. The ring used to blackmail the victims and their families and extort millions of rupees from them for preventing the videos to be circulated on the internet — a demand that most families accepted without offering much resistance. The videos of many children however did appeared on dark web. Imran Ali might have learned about the dark web and its customer base from others in the business. It is unconvincing if someone will say that Imran Ali was the lone wolf. He must have been just one person involved in the rapes and killings of some many young girls. There must have been others too involved in the crime.
The world might not give as much attention to Zainab and other raped and murdered children as it gives to the cases such as that of Malala and Chibok school girls only because the world is so heavily investing in the war against terrorism. However the story of each raped and murdered child is no less painful than those of the children killed by the terrorists
Whereas for the rest of the world, Malala Yousufzai and the slain children of APS are the only faces of crimes against children perhaps because these cases offers countless opportunities for talking about war on terrorism. However for an average Pakistani, Zainab and countless other raped and brutally murdered children are the bigger victims. The world might not give as much attention to Zainab and other raped and murdered children as it gives to the cases such as that of Malala and Chibok school girls only because the world is so heavily investing in the war against terrorism. However the story of each raped and murdered child is no less painful than those of the children killed by the terrorists.
The successive child rape cases has so far fallen on the deaf years. Even after the story of Kasur child sex offenses in such large number surfaced, no significant reforms were ever made in the procedure for treating the child rape cases on priority basis or even differently. Even if the cases such as that of Zainab and the Kasur’s raped boys cannot instigate the creation of slogans such as “I am Malala” or “Bring back our girls”, still such cases does not warrant a reaction as cold as the one given by the then Provincial Minister of Law who had denied the Kasur child sex abuse case ever happening.
It is interesting to note that in this country, the offenders have always traditionally been either close relatives, friend’s relatives, or complete strangers. However Muslim religious clerics were also found to be offenders in various cases. Every once in a while, one may read a case of a child either being raped or raped and murdered by a cleric, sometimes right inside the mosque or a religious seminary. Since the powerful religio-political parties often support the religious clerics unconditionally, therefore it is not easy to raise a finger on a cleric in child rape case.
There is no concrete statistic available that would demonstrate the pattern of child rape in the country. The conviction rate of the offenders is also very low. Mostly either the parents don’t register a case fearing that they would be ridiculed, or even if they do register a case, the long and often faulty justice system provides them little relief except for informally advising them to settle the matter outside the court. The matters are settled outside the court by forcing money onto the victim family or worst still by receiving a child bride in return at least in rural areas.
Unless the world will not force the government of Pakistan to strengthen the legislation on child sex abuse, many more cases such as that of Zainab and Kasur raped boys will keep surfacing every single day. The government of Pakistan must be forced to treat the cases of child rape with due dignity and reform the procedures involved in providing the justice to such victims and their families. Moreover the government must be asked to ensure that the out of court settlements must be there only if the victim or the guardians are proposing this out of their own free will. The Pakistani government must also be helped in training the investigators in how to proceed in child rape cases. Lastly, I support the father of Zainab Ansari in asking a public hanging of Imran Ali. He should be made an example for others with the similar motives.
The writer is an Assistant Professor
Published in Daily Times, October 19th 2018.