By Staff Reporter
LAHORE: Police in the Pakistani city of Lahore registered a criminal case on Thursday against five suspects accused of kidnapping two foreign women for ransom and subjecting them to sexual assault, an incident that has drawn direct intervention from the top elected official in Punjab province.
The victims, nationals of the Netherlands and Venezuela, had travelled to Pakistan to visit friends, according to police and a government statement. They were rescued within two hours of authorities being alerted, and four of the five suspects named in the case have been arrested.
The case came to light after the father of one of the women, speaking from Spain, called Pakistan’s Police Emergency Helpline 15 to report that his daughter had gone missing.
Deputy Inspector General of Police Faisal Kamran said officers dispatched a team of senior officials that recovered the women, tracking the suspects with the help of surveillance cameras operated by the Punjab Safe City Authority. A first information report, the formal document that opens a criminal case in Pakistan, was subsequently lodged.
“We took into confidence the Dutch Embassy officials and updated them about the criminal proceedings of the case, recovery of the victims,” Kamran told reporters. He said the women’s travel documents had been completed and that they were expected to leave Pakistan shortly.
According to the FIR, the suspects abducted the women and demanded $1.5 million in ransom before sexually assaulting them during their captivity. One of the five suspects named is a close relative of a senior political figure, the document states. A security guard fled the scene during the incident, and police said they were working to locate him.
Kamran said the investigation was continuing and that those responsible would be brought before a court and punished under Pakistani law.
The two women were produced before a judicial magistrate at the Cantonment Courts in Lahore, where they gave statements under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, a legal provision under which a magistrate records a victim’s account early in an investigation. A women’s counsel representing the victims was present during the closed-door hearing, in which the women described what had happened to them.
The provincial government said Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz took immediate notice of the case after being informed of the abduction and directed police to recover the women within two hours. Lahore police then launched what officials described as a rescue operation, tracing the suspects with Safe City Authority assistance and arresting four of them.
The rescued women underwent medical examinations, according to the government statement, and further legal proceedings are under way based on the evidence gathered so far.
The case has drawn significant public attention in Pakistan, both over the severity of the allegations and reports that one suspect is linked to a prominent political family.
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