MUZAFFARABAD: A police constable, accused of sexually harassing two female students in Bagh district of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), was arrested on Sunday, a day after a first information report (FIR) was registered against him.

The suspect, a constable of district police in Bagh, was fleeing to Pakistan in a public transport vehicle when police busted him near Gujjar Kohala, AJK’s police chief Dr Sohail Habib Tajik told Dawn.

The FIR against him was registered on Saturday afternoon on the complaint of the victims, who belong to two different villages of Bagh, and had been residing in a hostel jointly managed by two public-sector educational institutions.

According to the FIR, lodged on the basis of their written application to the senior superintendent of police Bagh, the suspect had not only been sexually harassing the complainants for the past six months but was also asking them to help him establish contact with other female students. He was also threatening the victims.

The suspect had seized their mobile phones, identity cards and educational certificates so as to keep them under duress forever, the FIR stated, a copy of which is available with Dawn.

He would tell them that all officers of the police department supported him and they [victims] could do no harm to him.

The FIR stated that the complainants had threatened to end their lives or take any other extreme step if the administration failed to take legal action on their application.

Statements of the complainants as well as the accused constable were recorded and screenshots obtained in the light of the application had established the commission of offences under sections 506 and 489/y of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and 29/31 of the Telegraph Act.

IGP Tajik told Dawn that the FIR was registered immediately after the matter came into his knowledge.

“A departmental inquiry by a senior police officer into the whole affair has also been initiated and the cell phone of the accused constable is also being sent for forensics,” he said.

Separately, the IGP said, a four-member joint investigation team (JIT), headed by Lady Inspector Jabeen Kausar and comprising Additional SHO Attique Ahmed Kiyani, Sub-Inspector Mohammad Asghar of the same station and Tanveer Khan, computer operator at District Police Headquarters, had also been constituted to separately investigate into the criminal aspects of the matter within five days.

“Rest assured, justice will not only be done but seen in this matter,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2021