Police Abuse of Women in Custody
During our October 1992 mission, we interviewed a number of women who had been tortured and mistreated in police custody. According to them, attorneys, and Pakistani human rights groups, common methods of torture included beating and slapping; suspension in mid-air by hands tied behind the victim's back; the insertion of foreign objects, including police batons and chili peppers, into the vagina and rectum; and gang rape.
In one well-publicized case, Aasia Ayoub was detained at the Banni police station in Rawalpindi on September 3, 1991, after a neighbor alleged that Ayoub had stolen a purse. Ayoub was arrested without warrant, and no formal charges were filed. According to subsequent inquiries, she was held overnight in the police lockup where the station house officer and other police present slapped her, threatened to insert chilies into her vagina, kissed her, and fondled her on the breasts, legs, and genitals. The police also threatened to molest her fourteen-year-old daughter. Widespread publicity about the case forced the government to take action. The police officers were suspended, but charges against them were only filed after a local human rights activist filed a writ requesting the High Court to intervene. A judicial inquiry concluded that the police had sexually tortured Ayoub. The magistrate who conductedthe inquiry was transferred after he refused to grant the officers bail. The police were eventually acquitted for lack of evidence.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent monitoring organization, reported in 1994 that an assistant sub-inspector of police in the Gujarpura district of Lahore raped a woman in police custody in the presence of her eighty-year-old mother, who was also molested. An inquiry determined that the officer was guilty and recommended that he be dismissed. In Kharian, a young woman who was reportedly raped by a police constable and three of his accomplices was herself charged with a crime when she reported the rape. After a magistrate heard the story, the case against the woman was dropped and the rapists arrested. We do not know whether they have been tried. During a 1994 raid on the village of Kadianwala, in Narowal district, police severely beat villagers, including several women, one of whom was pregnant.27
27 Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, State of Human Rights in 1994 (Lahore, 1995), pp. 44-45, 49.
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