HYDERABAD, September 06 2006: The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), a Hong Kong based regional human right watchdog, has called on rights activist around the world to appeal to President Musharraf, Chief Justice Supreme Court and Sindh High Court and other government authorities to take legal action against those involved in alleged rape of law student at Karachi university, according to statement issued on Tuesday (Sept 05). The AHRC reported the alleged rape of a female law student from the SM Law College by three staff of Islamic Learning Department and student of Department of Physics at Karachi University on July 28.

“Even through the perpetrators were brought before the Vice Chancellor Pirzada Qasim, he was suspended only after incident was reported in newspapers and he also prevented the victims from lodging a complaint at the police station,” the AHRC claimed in statement. “The University authorities have still not filed case against the alleged accused people,” the statement alleged. The university authorities have already taken more then a month to conduct an inquiry about the incident. Because of delay in the registration in the case, action is yet to be taken against the perpetrators.”

The AHRC said the delay in the registering the case against the perpetrators would encourage similar abuses within the university premises in future, said the statement.
It urged the Karachi University to take action against the alleged perpetrators and to report the case to the police so that they could be held accountable for their crimes through legal procedure. “Only through this action will the university be able to provide effective remedies to the victims and to send a strong signal to the people that it will never allow such crimes to happen again.”

The AHRC urged civilians and rights activist to send an appeal on its website to demand the police to take action to arrest the perpetrators and to file a case at police station so that a police investigation could begin.
Source: Daily Times
Date:6/9/2006