Kasur, Pakistan - Nine-year-old Faizan Muhammad stepped out of the

mosque where his family lives in the small central Pakistani town of
Chunian on a warm September evening.

Hours later, he had still not returned home, and his family began to fear the
worst.

The next morning, a local driver found his body in a barren field a few
kilometres away, the fourth victim of a series of child kidnappings and
murders in the area located in northern Punjab state.

Muhammad's body was not alone, however. Alongside him, police found
human remains and skeletons, later identified to belong to the three other
boys who were kidnapped, raped and murdered between June and
September this year.

After a two-week hunt, during which police took DNA samples from more
than 1,700 people in the area, they narrowed down their search to just one
suspect: Sohail Shahzad, a local rickshaw driver.
People chant slogans to condemn the rape and killing of seven-year-old girl Zainab
Ansari in Kasur, during a protest in Karachi [File: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters]
Shahzad confessed to the murders, saying he would take his rickshaw
around town in the evening, just as the summer's scorching temperatures
began to drop and children came out of their homes to play.

He would offer the boys 100 rupees (roughly $0.60) and a rickshaw ride.
Once they hopped on, he would rape and strangle them to death, his
confessional statement to police says.

Cases of missing children are not new in Kasur district, where Chunian is
located. There has been a spate of recent child kidnappings, rapes and
assaults reported in recent years.

Kasur - under the microscope after a child pornography ring was broken up
here in 2015 - illustrates how Pakistan's newly strengthened child
protection laws and authorities have failed to stop such crimes.
New laws, no implementation
Last year alone, over 3,800 cases of child sexual abuse were reported
across Pakistan, a country of 207 million people, according to child rights
organisation, Sahil.

The most vulnerable groups were identified as boys between the ages of six
and 15 years old, and girls who are either infants or between 16 and 18 years
old.

The numbers are not atypical for the region. In India's capital New Delhi
alone, over 2,000 rape cases were reported in 2018, while in Bangladesh, a
survey conducted last year said 87 percent of children had experienced
sexual abuse. 

India introduced the death penalty for child rapists last year to try to

control the rising number of cases.

In 2017, Pakistan's penal code was amended to address the endemic

problem of child abuse. Laws were tightened concerning child
pornography, exposure of a child to seduction and child sexual abuse.
Rights organisations, however, say not enough is being done.

"Our laws are certainly strong enough for convictions in child abuse cases,"
says Manizeh Bano, Sahil's executive director. "The problem remains with
implementation."

More recently, child-friendly courts have also been set up in parts of the
country, where there are particular hours for children so they do not
interact with adult criminals or suspects.

There are still, however, no counsellors to take care of a child's

psychological needs, or staff trained to speak with victims of trauma, says
Bano.

"When children come to court they should have a screen in front of them so
they can testify without having to face their accuser," says Bano, adding
that children should also be allowed to give their account on video if the
laws are to be implemented in spirit.

At present, police in Punjab province, where Kasur is located, are working

on some of these changes to make the investigation process easier on
children, including visiting children at home rather than forcing them to
come to police stations to record their statements.
Muhammad Ramzan, the father of Faizan Muhammad, who went missing on
September 16. Faizan's body was found a day later alongside the skeletal remains of
three other boys. [Zehra Abid/Al Jazeera]

'Hang him'
In a country where there is often little trust in the justice system, there is
still anger among the victims' families.

Muhammad's father, a quiet man, speaks loudly only when he is asked what
justice means to him.

"When the police have arrested him, then what are they doing? He needs to
be hanged publicly, so people remember this can also be done to them," he
says.
Rights groups have said capital punishment does not deter crime -
particularly crimes involving sexual assault - but for the victims' families in
Kasur, it seems there is no other acceptable outcome.

Last year, six-year-old Zainab Ansari's body was found in a trash dump in
Kasur's main town. Police said she was raped before she was killed. Imran
Ali, a local man, was arrested and convicted for her murder in a high-profile
trial following countrywide protests against the crime. 

Residents said they believe that it was only because Ali was not publicly
executed that cases of child rape continue to occur in their district.

Police, however, cautioned that in order to ensure children's safety,

authorities and parents need to take preventive measures, not reactive
ones. 
READ MORE

Fair trial concerns plague Pakistan sexual assault cases

"We have a mob mentality, which is not going to make our society any safer
for children. What we need to do, is increase awareness around sexual
violence," said Sohail Tajik, a senior police official and investigator in the
Chunian case.

Some of the plans authorities are discussing include using Friday prayer
sermons at mosques to educate people regarding sexual abuse, a subject
around which discussion remains taboo in South Asian societies.

Events are also being planned to educate parents and increase awareness
about ways to keep children safer. Since Ansari's disappearance and
murder, a number of such programmes have been held in schools across
Kasur district.

While much has happened following Ansari's murder, however, her family
says even Ali's execution last year failed to bring them closure.

"I can't bear seeing any news about child rape in Kasur. Every time such an
incident happens, I feel like I'm hearing about Zainab for the first time,"
said Nusrat Amin, Ansari's mother.

For the victims of the latest child rapes and murders, too, their ordeal is far
from over.

"I need my child's body back. I need to bury him … I just need to bury him,"
said Farzana Hasnain, the mother of Ali Hasnain, a 10-year-old who went
missing on August 17 and whose body was found alongside Muhammad's.
As police continued their investigations, the bodies of three of the four
victims had yet to be handed back to their families.

The impact of the loss in Chunian is intensified by the poverty of these

families. Many said they have barely earned any income in recent months,
as they left their homes in search of their children. Today, they are still
paying back loans taken to print out posters asking for information on their
missing children.

Why Kasur?
Even in a country where sexual abuse is widespread, the violence and scale
of recent incidents in Kasur have shocked people in this Muslim-majority
South Asian nation.

In 2015, journalists and police uncovered a massive child pornography ring

in the town, which had made more than 400 videos of young boys engaging
in sexual acts, and then blackmailed their families. Ansari was murdered
last year, and the man convicted for her murder and rape also accused of
raping at least eight other children.

At first glance, Kasur does not appear to be particularly more conservative

than other parts of the country.
Women walk through its bazaars at night, and can be seen sitting at
restaurants by themselves, which is not usually a common sight in other
parts of the country.

"What differentiates Kasur from other parts of the country is the nature of
brutality," said Tajik, the senior police official. "We have had serial rapists
who have strangled their victims and dumped the bodies."

Men here said that sexual abuse and assault in Kasur is common, almost a
rite of passage when growing up here.

Playing cricket on the street or stepping out to the playground meant being
abused by older boys, said Waqas Khan, who runs several schools around
Kasur. He said it was seen as a sign of masculinity for an older boy to have a
child with him to perform sexual acts with.

Residents said societal reactions often vary when it comes to the gender of
the child being abused. When a girl child is abused it is treated as a crime,
but for the boys, it is seen in good humour, said community members.
In fact, Shahzad, the man linked to the rape and murder of the four boys in
Chunian, spoke out following his arrest about his own history of suffering
sexual abuse. He was abused for 12 years at the shop where he worked, he
told police, who later arrested his former employer.

But for the families of the victims, who remain missing, closure is hard to
come by.

"I won't even be able to see his face one last time," said Farzana Hasnain,
mother of the 10-year-old who went missing in August. "There's nothing
left, all that I'll see are his bones."

Pakistan victim recalls sex abuse ordeal (2:25)

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zehra Abid
 Child rights
 Pakistan

 Asia

 Abuse

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