LAHORE: Three Pakistani police officers have been transferred to other districts accused of negligence amid a deepening scandal over a paedophile ring alleged to have abused hundreds of children for nearly a decade, officials said yesterday.
A prominent family in the central Punjabi village of Husain Khan Wala allegedly used guns, knives and axes to force children - some as young as five - to perform sex acts on video, which they sold or used to extort money from the victims’ families, villagers said.
This weekend, the prime minister vowed an investigation after protests by parents that Kasur police had not investigated their complaints.
The officers were removed from their posts “for their negligence on the Kasur sex scandal”, Nabeela Ghazanfar, a spokesperson for the provincial police said.
District police chief Rai Babar and two deputy superintendents were reassigned out of the district. Police in Pakistan are rarely sacked.
Parents said that police had refused to register some complaints and treated some of the victims “like criminals”.
The police have arrested 14 suspects so far. Seven cases have been registered against them for alleged sodomy, kidnapping and torture, police official Muhammad Amin said.
The accused would be tried in an anti-terrorism court, Amin said. Law enforcement officials frequently use the anti-terror courts to bypass Pakistan’s moribund judicial system.
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of the prime minister, said on Tuesday that he was “personally monitoring” the case. “We will not let anyone involved in this incident escape the law. All victim families will get every assistance to identify culprits without any fear,” he said.
Reuters
