Perps in village council ordered rape acquitted

Five acquitted in Mukhtar Mai case

MULTAN: A division bench of the Lahore High Court Multan Bench on Thursday acquitted five of six men sentenced to death in the Mukhtar Mai gang-rape case, quashing the judgement of an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Dera Ghazi Khan.

The bench consisting of Justices Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry and Mehmood Akhtar Shahid Siddiqui turned the death sentence of Abdul Khaliq into life imprisonment and acquitted Ghulam Fareed, Fayyaz Hussain, Faiz Bakhsh, Allah Ditta Mastoi and Ramzan Pujar for lack of evidence.

Mukhtar Mai broke into tears on hearing the ruling and said her life now had no purpose. She told Daily Times that she felt insecure because the Mastois would take revenge violently. However, Mai said that she would challenge the judgement.

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Her appeal was rejected.

LHC rejects Mukhtar Mai’s appeal

MULTAN: A division bench of the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) Multan Bench on Friday rejected appeals by Mukhtar Mai against the acquittal of eight Mastoi clan members. The division bench consisting of Justices Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry and Mehmood Akhtar Shahid Siddiqui rejected the appeals against the acquittal of Ghulam Hussain, Hazoor Bakhsh, Rasul Bakhsh, Muhammad Qasim, Muhammad Aslam, Allah Ditta, Khalil Ahmed and Ghulam Hussain.

Nicholas Kristof op-ed in New York Times.

When Rapists Walk Free

One of the gutsiest people on earth is Mukhtaran Bibi. And after this week, she'll need that courage just to survive.

Mukhtaran, a tall, slim young woman who never attended school as a child, lives in a poor and remote village in the Punjab area of Pakistan. As part of a village dispute in 2002, a tribal council decided to punish her family by sentencing her to be gang-raped. She begged and cried, but four of her neighbors immediately stripped her and carried out the sentence. Then her tormenters made her walk home naked while her father tried to shield her from the eyes of 300 villagers.

Until two days ago, she was thriving. Then - disaster.

A Pakistani court overturned the death sentences of all six men convicted in the attack on her and ordered five of them freed. They are her neighbors and will be living alongside her. Mukhtaran was in the courthouse and collapsed in tears, fearful of the risk this brings to her family.

"Yes, there is danger," she said by telephone afterward. "We are afraid for our lives, but we will face whatever fate brings for us."

Mukhtaran, not the kind of woman to squander money on herself by flying, even when she has access to $133,000, took an exhausting 12-hour bus ride to Islamabad yesterday to appeal to the Supreme Court. Mercy Corps will help keep her in a safe location, and those donations from readers may keep her alive for the time being. But for the long term, Mukhtaran has always said she wants to stay in her village, whatever the risk, because that's where she can make the most difference.

I had planned to be in Pakistan this week to write a follow-up column about Mukhtaran. But after a month's wait, the Pakistani government has refused to give me a visa, presumably out of fear that I would write more about Pakistani nuclear peddling. (Hmm, a good idea. ...)

Mukhtaran's life illuminates what will be the central moral challenge of this century, the brutality that is the lot of so many women and girls in poor countries. For starters, because of inattention to maternal health, a woman dies in childbirth in the developing world every minute.

In Pakistan, if a woman reports a rape, four Muslim men must generally act as witnesses before she can prove her case. Otherwise, she risks being charged with fornication or adultery - and suffering a public whipping and long imprisonment.