Tag: Punjab

  • Gujranwala girl, who approached police for case against harassers, ‘raped by assistant sub-inspector’

    Gujranwala girl, who approached police for case against harassers, ‘raped by assistant sub-inspector’

    A girl in Gujranwala, who had approached the police for the registration of a case against at least two men who assaulted her, was allegedly raped by the assistant sub-inspector (ASI) responsible to serve justice.

    According to media reports, the incident took place when the girl, along with her father, approached Aroop police in Gujranwala to lodge a complaint against two men who had torn her clothes while assaulting her on September 9.

    ASI Mubashar was appointed as the inquiry officer to look into the matter. The cop, however, instead of initiating legal action against the accused, sexually assaulted the woman.

    “He kept calling me ‘sister’ and raped me,” the survivor said in a statement, adding that it was followed by the force pressurising her family and her to not pursue the matter.

    Having lost faith in the local police, the survivor’s family has now approached Gujranwala city police officer (CPO), who has reportedly ordered a probe.

    While the victim and her family continue to allege that senior police officials are also trying to save the ASI, The Current has learnt that Cantonment Superintendent of Police (SP) Hafeezur Rehman has vowed prompt justice.

    “The case will be investigated on merit and departmental action will be initiated against the policeman if he is found guilty of rape,” he was quoted as saying.

    Meanwhile, Punjab Inspector General of Police (IGP) Inam Ghani has also reportedly taken notice of the incident and directed the officials concerned to submit to him a detailed report. 

    Medical reports of the girl were awaited by the time this report was filed.

  • Medical reports confirm gang-rape on Lahore motorway

    Medical reports confirm gang-rape on Lahore motorway

    Medical reports have confirmed that the woman who was robbed at the motorway was also gang-raped.

    Media reports had earlier claimed that she had been subjected to sexual assault in front of her children. 

    As per reports, the woman with her two children, was stuck on the road as her car ran out of fuel in the Gujjar Pura area of Lahore. Two unidentified men attacked them and broke the window of their car.

    They took the woman to nearby fields where she was gang-raped and later robbed by the men who fled the scene promptly.

    After the news of the incident made headlines, the Punjab government took “serious notice” and tweeted that the victim will be served justice and the culprits will soon be behind bars.

    The police have set up check posts across the province after preparing the sketch of the accused. The village of the accused has been identified and an extensive search operation is underway. At least 12 suspects have already been arrested.  

    Also Read: Police arrest man who allegedly gang-raped TikTok friend

    According to earlier details, the woman had called the motorway police and asked for help but the police reportedly “refused to provide her help”.

    Many celebrities, social activists and other social media users took to Twitter to condemn the incident and demanded public hanging of the rapists.

    https://twitter.com/dr__jhatka/status/1303912625970065410?s=20

  • Punjab bans recordings of films, dramas at mosques, shrines

    The Punjab Auqaf and Religious Affairs Department has banned the shooting of films and dramas in mosques and shrines after the recent controversy surrounding Bilal Saeed and Saba Qamar’s latest song Qubool which was shot at Lahore’s historical Masjid Wazir Khan.

    According to details, a notification dated August 13, 2020, states that if any act is recorded in a mosque or a shrine, the relevant manager and zonal administrator would be responsible.

    The approval to shoot a documentary in these sites will be subject to consultation with the department of religious affairs, it adds.

    The Auqaf department’s notification specified that no shooting featuring a woman in a shrine or mosque will be allowed.

    Approximately 544 shrines and 437 mosques fall under the management of the department, which has been listed in its notification issued last week.

    Read More – Fahad Mustafa, Iqrar ul Hassan extend support to Saba, Bilal after music video backlash

    The decision came after public outcry against the shoot of a music video featuring Bilal Saeed and Saba Qamar at Wazir Khan mosque in Lahore. Though the two artists publicly apologised for hurting public sentiment and removed the sequence from their music video, they received a lot of backlash and cases were also registered over the scene picturized at the mosque.

  • Special rescue services to be launched in Sindh

    Special rescue services to be launched in Sindh

    The director-general of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) announced that a unified rescue service like Punjab’s ‘Rescue 1122’ will be initiated in six divisional headquarters of Sindh.

    As per reports, the future rescue service will have different teams for firefighting, ambulances and rescue operations.

    The sections will be divided among different organisations as the firefighting operations will be managed by Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and ambulances will be checked by Aman Foundation.

    The PDMA will run the urban search and rescue operation, whereas, a unified call center will be set up for collecting all complaints of the three categories.

    According to the plan presented by PDMA, seven teams will be made for urban search and rescue besides dedicating services of two teams for Karachi and others for each division province. In order to follow the international standard, 60 to 62 persons will be part of the urban rescue team.

    A total of six stations will be established for the urban rescue team in the provincial capital Karachi, whereas, expert swimmers will be appointed in two stations to be established near the beach to handle the drowning incidents.

    The PDMA director-general said that the project has been planned with the help of a global consultant and PC-1 of the rescue service will be submitted to the planning and development department.

    He added that the unified rescue service project will be launched within a period of one and a half years by the fund of the World Bank (WB) after getting approved by the government.

  • Lockdown order withdrawn; Punjab returns to ‘pre-coronavirus’ routine with a few exceptions

    The Punjab Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department has allowed resumption of “pre-COVID-19 practices subject to the adoption of social distancing guidelines” as it withdrew the government’s lockdown order.

    According to the notification dated August 9, all sectors barring marriage halls and marquees and educational institutions have been allowed to resume operations from Monday (August 10), with timings and weekly holidays “reverted to pre-COVID-19 practice”.

    According to Dawn, religious congregations will only be held after approval from the administration and will be bound to follow the standard operating procedures laid out by the government. Operators of public transport — that has been allowed to resume function — will also have to ensure that preventive measures are being observed by passengers.

    The notification was issued three days after the federal government announced it was lifting restrictions on the tourism sector, restaurants and public transport, after months of suspension.

    The decisions were made in a meeting of the National Coordination Committee, which was presided over by Prime Minister Imran Khan and attended by representatives of all the provinces. The meeting participants also decided to lift restrictions on railways, airlines and metro buses.

    While the restrictions are being eased as government boasts of having successfully tackled the pandemic, it is worth mentioning that a sudden spike has been recorded in coronavirus infections over the past week. The number of per day fatalities, however, on Sunday dropped to single digits for the first time in over 110 days.

  • NAB summons Buzdar for ‘issuing illegal liquor licences’

    NAB summons Buzdar for ‘issuing illegal liquor licences’

    The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has summoned Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Usman Buzdar on August 12 for what it says was illegal issuance of liquor licences.

    The anti-graft watchdog has accused the provincial chief executive of illegally using powers of Excise director general (DG) and issuing liquor permits to a private hotel in Lahore.

    The hotel in question is the same as the one in regard to which reports had falsely claimed that a local company was setting up a “liquor bar” at the Allama Iqbal International Airport after approval from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led Punjab government.

    “A section of local media wrongly reported that the provincial government has granted a license to a company to sell liquor at the airport,” then spokesperson to the CM, Dr Shahbaz Gill, had said in a video message in January last year.

    He had further said that an under-construction five-star hotel near the airport had sought permission, which was duly granted after all the legal requirements were fulfilled.

    “This is not something new and all the major hotels in the country are permitted under the laws,” Gill said.

    However, the issuance has reportedly landed the Punjab CM in hot water.

    Earlier, on May 24, in view of the threat of sale of poisonous liquor on the occasion of Eidul Fitr, Punjab Excise and Taxation DG Hafiz Ziaul Mustafa issued a letter to stop the sale of illegal liquor and take necessary steps, The Express Tribune reported.

    Some unscrupulous elements use clinical alcohol, sedative tablets and juices of rotten fruits to brew liquor which is then sold in bottles of local and foreign brands. In the past scores of people have died and many more have gone blind from this locally brewed concoction.

    The DG also directed to pay special attention to liquor license holders on the occasion of Eid. A letter issued from the office of the DG said that several people have been affected by drinking toxic liquor in recent years which has embarrassed the government.

    Bootleggers making this toxic moonshine were likely to bring out their product on the festive occasion of Eid to grab the merriment mood of poor people who could not afford a pint of legally sold liquor available from licenced excise shops.

  • Naya Pakistan: Matric pass PTI MPA becomes new chairperson of Punjab Education Foundation

    The recent “election” of the new chairperson of the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) has attracted widespread social media attention after it was revealed that he himself holds only a matriculation or secondary school certificate.

    Established in 1991, PEF is an autonomous statutory body to encourage and promote education on non-commercial/non-profit basis. Since then, it has come a long way to arrange free quality education for the deserving children at their doorsteps.

    On July 27, the first meeting of the newly-constituted Board of Governors (BoG) of the PEF was held in which the members, through consensus, elected Sardar Aftab Akbar as the new chairperson.

    According to the Punjab Assembly’s official website, the academic qualification of Akbar, a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MPA from PP-23 (Chakwal-III), is matriculation. He has served as the tehsil nazim in Chakwal from 2005 to 2010, while still serves as a member of the Primary and Secondary Healthcare as well as Committee on Privileges of the Punjab Assembly.

    It is pertinent to mention here that the PEF has been in the limelight these days for non-payment to its partner schools across Punjab. The owners and teaching and non-teaching staff of PEF partner schools had protested recently outside the Punjab Assembly and the Governor House. They had even tried to reach Zaman Park over the non-payment issue that has made them unable to pay salaries to teaching and non-teaching staff besides clearing building rents and utility bills etc.

    Punjab School Education Minister Dr Murad Raas, with regard to non-payments, says that PEF had already paid 50 per cent of the payment to the schools and remaining payment would be made only after verification of the students enrolled in these schools. He said previously some 250,000 fake enrolments were detected at many PEF partner schools and since millions of rupees were to be paid to the schools, verification of students was a must.

    The minister said many PEF partner schools were in fact beneficiaries of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the government would not waste public money on fake enrolments. He said the PEF initiative was aimed to bring out of school children into schools and not to financially support fake enrolments. Dr Muard Raas further said he had also apprised Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan about the issue in a recent meeting who had assured full support.

  • Banning books

    Banning books

    German poet Heinrich Heine once warned, “Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.”

    In Pakistan’s case, we may not be burning books, but we are banning them. From banning online apps to games, from media censorship to censoring books, Pakistan is on a downward spiral. According to Geo, the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board (PCTB) banned a hundred school books in a single day for containing content deemed “anti-national” and “blasphemous”.

    “We are currently examining over 10,000 books being taught in private schools,” said PCTB Managing Director Rai Manzoor Hussain Nasir. “So the banned textbooks could be in thousands once we are done.”

    Rai is taking these steps under the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board Act, 2015, which was passed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government. It seems that both the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the PML-N do not value critical thinking and fundamental freedom.

    This policy is a complete disaster. We saw what happened under the Zia regime back in the 1980s when our curriculum was infused with extremist ideology. It changed our society and led to intolerance. Now we are seeing a repetition of something along the same lines. Rai Manzoor has a problem with a book of mathematics where counting concepts were explained to the young students showing pictures of pigs. He also has a problem with Gandhi’s quotes being taught in another book. Gandhi was India’s founding father but he fought for the rights of Muslims in India and was consequently killed by an RSS extremist for propagating peaceful co-existence with the Muslim minority. Are we demonising someone just because we want to see him from the prism of animosity towards India?

    If we want to keep our children isolated in a globalised world by teaching them only about ourselves, and not any non-Pakistanis, the solution was not to ban books with Gandhi’s quotes but probably to add more quotes from Pakistani historical figures. Do we not want to teach our children about the struggles of Nelson Mandela, who is quite often quoted by Prime Minister Imran Khan? Banning books or taking out quotes of non-Pakistanis is ridiculous at best and dangerous in the long term. The path we are taking today will impact our coming generations.

    The power of deciding curriculum and books is a grave power. For it to be in the hands of someone who is no Chomsky or any other learned figure, we must raise our voice at this grave injustice that is being inflicted upon our future generations. Our national interests are not so weak that they will be endangered by some quotes from non-Pakistanis. But it seems that we want to ban critical thinking. We want to ban the foundation of learning, i.e. asking questions and being inquisitive. We want to produce robots instead of intelligent human beings. We must resist this type of indoctrination. Closed minds cannot lead this country to progress. Stifling freedom of expression and censoring books will push Pakistan back by decades. Let us not go down this dark path. 

  • Punjab govt launches app for online purchase of sacrificial animals

    Punjab govt launches app for online purchase of sacrificial animals

    The Punjab government has launched an application ‘Bakra Mandi Online’ for the online purchase of the sacrificial animals for Eid-ul-Azha amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The application can be used to buy sacrificial animals without visiting the cattle markets that are set by the government in the province under strict COVID-19 SOPs.

    The application has all the details (age, weight, and race) and images of the animals.

    Read More – Eid ul Adha: Cattle markets to operate from 6 am to 7 pm

    The Punjab government on July 04 issued the standard operating procedures for the establishment of cattle markets for Eid ul Azha.

    According to the notification issued by Punjab health ministry, cattle markets should be established 2-5 kilometers outside the city area. The markets should have large parking lots with separate entry and exit points, the notification read.

    The elderly and children will not be allowed to visit the markets.

    “People experiencing symptoms like fever, the cough should avoid visiting cattle markets,” the notification added.

  • Police arrest man who allegedly gang-raped TikTok friend

    Police arrest man who allegedly gang-raped TikTok friend

    The Lahore Police has arrested a man who allegedly gang-raped a girl with his two accomplices. The two reportedly became friends at a popular video-sharing app, TikTok.

    According to reports, the victim girl filed a complaint at Millat Park police station in Lahore in which she accused three men of gang-raping her.

    In her complaint, the girl stated that she became friends with a boy, Shiraz, through the TikTok app 20 days ago. Shiraz then called her to come to the Samanabad area on June 13. When she reached there, Shiraz asked her to sit in his car. Two men were already sitting in the vehicle.

    The girl said that she was gang-raped by all three men on gunpoint inside the car.