KARACHI, Aug 17: It was Sunday evening, when a young couple went to an amusement park on Rashid Minhas Road, unaware of what awaits them.

The young man and his fiancee, identities of them cannot be revealed for obvious reasons, left the park just before sunset and took a taxi from the front side of the park. They got into the cab and took the back seat.

The driver, however, stopped the cab after a few kilometres ahead and two men, clad in shalwar kameez, approach the vehicle as if they were waiting for it. One of them took the passenger seat beside the driver and the other occupied the back seat beside the young man.

As the couple tried to raise hue and cry, the strangers took out pistols and forced them to keep quite.

Narrating the ordeal, the man said: “They told us to bow down and blind-folded me. The cab kept moving for about 30/45 minutes before it stopped at some house-like place where another man was already present. The four men tied me to a chair and all of them subjected my fiancee to criminal assault. They had threatened her that they will kill me if she tried to offer resistance.”

After the gangrape, the perpetrators forced the couple into the same cab and dropped them at a deserted place in Buffer Zone, the man said and added that they hired a rickshaw to reach home.

The young couple had first decided not to disclose their ordeal to anybody as this would only bring more miseries to them and render them social outcast.

Devastated by the ordeal, the young man feels that he himself was responsible for what happened to his fiancee as it was his idea to enjoy an evening with her in Aladin Park. The couple plans to get married soon.

The couple, later, decided to narrate their horrific ordeal requesting anonymity, only to forewarn young couples who would visit the park that they must beware of the notorious gangs operating both inside and outside the park.

According to the young man, such persons and gangs roam freely in the city as their victims have no choice but to keep silent and refrain from reporting their ordeal to police.

“Approaching police in such a situation would mean inviting further trouble and social stigma. Moreover, the perpetrators would still be enjoying immunity,” he said.

The service road in front of the Aladin Park remains occupied by taxis. Traffic police are posted at the nearby kiosk and mobile vans of regular police also patrol across the park’s main entrance quite frequently. However, most of the time the police personnel remain busy minting money from couples visiting the park. The young man suspected that at least one of the four rapists was a policeman. He, however, added that it was only his hunch.

“We belong to the lower middle class and cannot afford prolonged litigation,” he maintained to justify their decision not to go for legal action.

A number of such incidents have taken place in the past, even inside the park, and FIRs of some of them have also been lodged with police.

However, a large number of notorious criminals are operating in and around the park, neighbours said.