ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani court on Friday sentenced Usman Mirza, the chief accused, and four accomplices to life imprisonment, in a case involving the sexual assault and filming of a couple in Islamabad that went viral on social media last year.
A video of Mirza and his accomplices was widely circulated in July last year in which they could be seen holding a couple at gunpoint, beating them and forcing the woman to strip. The incident took place at an Islamabad flat and caused widespread public outrage and calls for justice.
Within hours of the video going viral, Mirza and his accomplices were arrested by Islamabad police.
However, a few months after the incident, the female victim retracted her statement, saying the accused were not guilty of any crime. The statement was widely believed to have been the result of pressure from the accused on the victims and their families to drop the case.
However, Parliamentary Secretary for Law Maleeka Bokhari said at the time the state would pursue the case in light of “irrefutable video and forensic evidence” against the accused and irrespective of the victims’ saying they wanted to drop the case.
“Additional Sessions court sentences #UsmanMirza and four others with life imprisonment in the case of harassment and assaulting of a couple in Islamabad,” Islamabad’s Deputy Commissioner, Hamza Shafqaat, said on Twitter on Friday.
Pakistan’s information minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain welcomed the verdict.
According to Pakistani English-language daily Dawn, a case was initially filed on July 6 under the Pakistan Penal Code section 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint), 354A (assault or use of criminal force against woman and stripping her of her clothes), 506 (ii) (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman).
Sections pertaining to rape, sexual abuse, extortion, and wrongful confinement were later added to the police report filed against the accused and his accomplices.
