Report over Kasur pornography scandal reveals authorities failure in tracing culprits

ISLAMABAD: The families of the rape victim children in Kasur pornography scandal were forced to withdraw their cases by the influential accused, revealed the Federal Ombudsman’s report on Tuesday.

The document highlighted the authorities’ failure in controlling such incidents and tracing culprits of mafia involved in child pornography.

The research report that has been submitted in the Presidency further says, the children who were physically abused belong to the remote areas, while the accused, named in the scandal were influential.

“Only few accused were sentenced in more than 272 registered cases of the child abuse in Kasur,” the report says and adds that the investigation was put on the back-burner by the influential by paying bribe to the police.

A centre was established in Kasur to find out the root-cause behind the alarming increase in the child abuse incident in the region, the report reads.

Unfortunately, the report revealed Punjab as the most dangerous province for children where nearly 1,089 cases of sexual violence out of the total 4,139 reported in the country were recorded.

The scandal

The Kasur child sexual abuse scandal is a series of child sexual abuses that occurred in Hussain Khanwala village in Kasur District, Punjab, Pakistan from 2006 to 2014, culminating in a major scandal in 2015.

After the discovery of hundreds of child pornography video clips it was estimated that 280 to 300 children, most of them male, were victims of sexual abuse.

The scandal involved an organized crime ring that sold child pornography to porn sites, and blackmailed and extorted relatives of the victims.

The scandal caused nationwide outrage, among allegations that the Punjab police and Malik Ahmad Saeed Khan, Kasur’s then Member of the Provincial Assembly from Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), were involved in an attempted cover-up of the abuse.