LAHORE: A raid conducted by ARY News’ Sar-e-Aam team along with officials from Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) cyber crime cell led to the arrest of a middle-aged man who raped several minor girls and filmed the assaults to blackmail their families.
As shown in January 18’s Sar-e-Aam show, the 45-year-old man named Saleem, a resident of Lahore’s Badamibagh area, was arrested after Sar-e-Aam team knew about his criminal activities through an informer.
At least 27 videos proving that he sexually assaulted several minor girls were recovered from his smartphone. The man confessed that he used to lure young girls to his house and then sexually assaulted them and then used to film the assault.
As FIA team arrested him in a raid conducted along with Sar-e-Aam team, the suspect not only confessed his heinous crime but also revealed that he used to film his crime to blackmail the girls and their families.
“I want you to kill me,” the accused Saleem asked Sar-e-Aam team and FIA officials.
It is pertinent to note here that in August last year, Sahil, an NGO working on protection of children against violence, released a report stating that child sexual abuse cases in Pakistan have increased from nine cases per day in 2017 to 12 cases per day in the first six months of 2018.
The data also revealed that children in the age brackets of 6-10 and 11-15 are most vulnerable to abuse.
The case comes at a time when Pakistan is still reeling from last year’s rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari in Kasur.
Kidnapped on January 4 and found from a garbage heap on January 9, Zainab’s autopsy report suggested that the minor was sexually assaulted before being strangulated to death.
