Home Journal List Pakistan Journal of Criminology Volume-12 Article Details

Punishing Rapists: Lessons Learnt from Motorway Rape Case

Abstract

In Pakistan’s society’s relationship to public policy is essentially emotional; the domain of criminal justice policy is no exception. There is hardly any discussion on sex crimes, especially rape and its species of offences, in the normal course of things. The reaction of the society is very strong and prompt, however, if and when a sex crime in the nature of rape takes place and gets publicized and followed up by media leading to quick action by criminal justice system as a whole. The infamous Motorway rape case, as it is now known, like earlier incidents of similar nature, brought home the realization that criminal justice system needs to be reformed and public is to be reassured of safety and security. On aggressive media outcry, all the components of the criminal justice system responded to the Motorway rape case. The unsecured space of the newly developed motorway that was not being policed earlier, was secured overnight and all the bureaucratic wrangling on its legalese came to an abrupt end. Provincial police i.e. the Punjab Police secured the crime scene and highly trained staff of the Punjab Forensic Science Agency collected the evidence. The police prosecution cooperation that is now the bedrock of successful prosecutions was noticeable right at the outset. The media complied with the guidelines on gender based violence cases and kept the confidentiality of the victim intact. The judge administered the case professionally and interpreted the law stringently and believed and weighed favorably the efforts undertaken by police, prosecution, forensic experts and medico-legal staff. The criminal justice system, in this case, at least came to fore to support the rule of law paradigm and evinced best of it. With all these positive sides, the case left much to be desired. For example, the use of offence of ‘kidnapping for ransom’ to attract the jurisdiction of the antiterrorism court is likely to get attacked further in appeal process and during the pending confirmation of the murder reference as the sentencing has ended up in imposing death sentences.

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