News Desk |
A member provincial assembly (MPA) of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has fled abroad after a university student accused him of raping and blackmailing her for 11 months in Multan.
The PML-N’s Punjab Assembly lawmaker, MPA Attaur Rehman, left for Dubai on a tourist visa from Multan airport on Monday night. According to the visa document, the MPA has a United Arab Emirates (UAE) visa valid till September 20, 2019, and he has used it to avoid possible arrest in the sex scandal case.
The victim, who is a first-year student of MSCS at the National College of Business Administration & Economics (NCBAE) in Multan, said that the influential PML-N leader had allegedly been blackmailing her that he would post her rape video on social media if she did not obey him.
The student, originally a resident of Lahore, was relocated to Multan for studies a year ago and has been working at the Pakistan Human Development Foundation (PHDF) – a local NGO being run by the lawmaker – ever since.
If she decides to contact us and submit a written application, then Multan police will ensure that necessary action is taken in accordance with the law.
The Express Tribune reported that Rehman allegedly raped S* after taking her to an undisclosed location in the guise of office work around 11 months ago. The victim said Rehman also filmed her ordeal using his mobile phone and threatened her of dire consequences if she refused to keep mum over the incident.
While threatening the victim that he would post the video online, Rehman allegedly blackmailed the victim into having sex for months to follow. “She eventually fell sick after Rehman allegedly sodomized her and was admitted to a hospital,” the paper reported.
Meanwhile, the police adopted routine tactics to avoid registering a case against the legislature despite repeated attempts until a local magistrate directed the authorities concerned to take swift action over victim’s complaint.
Subsequently, the police team constituted to probe the matter submitted its report to Punjab Inspector General of Police (IGP) Captain (retd) Arif Nawaz Khan after meeting the victim’s mother at her residence in Lahore.
Read more: PML-N’s MNA allegedly raped & blackmailed a student in Multan
Indicating possible guilt, the paper reported that the MPA had allegedly tried to convince the victim into dropping charges against him in return for Rs70 million.
However, while speaking to The Express Tribune, Multan CCPO Zubair Ahmed said the victim was yet to be traced despite several attempts made by the police team to contact her over the telephone.
“If she decides to contact us and submit a written application, then Multan police will ensure that necessary action is taken in accordance with the law,” he added.
MPA Atta-ur-Rehman
According to the website of the Punjab Assembly, Rehman is a PML-N MPA who won the PP-210 seat from Khanewal in the 2018 elections. Previously, he has remained the chairman of the municipal committee and Nazim in the local government set-up in Jahanian.
Read more: Gang rape silenced: An ugly face of Pakistan’s criminal justice system
His brother Chaudhry Iftikhar Nazir is a member National Assembly of Pakistan. MNA Nazir was elected a member of the assembly in 2008, 2013 and 2018. They both belong to PML-N.