Torture incident: Lahore school expels victim amoung five students

LAHORE Staff RepoRt

A private school in Lahore expelled five students, including the victim of bullying, after a video of the girl being tortured by her classmates went viral on social media, prompting authorities to take notice and launch an investigation.

According to police officials, the school management did not cooperate with the police and refused to provide the CCTV footage of the incident to the investigating officer. However, the statements of four eyewitnesses were recorded. The seven accused named in the case of violence against the student include the principal Bilal and canteen employee Nasir, among others. A five-member committee was also formed by the education department to investigate the matter. The video footage, which was shared numerous times on Twitter on Friday, shows two to three teenage girls holding the alleged victim by the hair and pinning her to the ground.

The girls could be heard verbally abusing the alleged victim and telling her to “say sorry”.

Another girl could be seen recording a video of the episode on her mobile phone.

The official accounts of the Capital City Police Lahore and the Punjab Police had responded to the video shared on Twitter, saying a case was registered and that an investigation was launched into the incident.

The first information report (FIR) was registered on the complaint of the victim’s father. According to the FIR, the complainant has said that her daughter was beaten by three of her class fellows at a private school located in DHA Phase 4 Lahore. The father claimed in the FIR that his daughter’s class fellows were drug addicts and were “forcing my daughter into the drug culture which compelled me to send a video of her doing drugs to her father”. “In order to take revenge from my daughter, they assaulted her on the 16th of January, 2023,” the complainant states in the FIR. The victim’s father claimed that the girls “tried to strangle my daughter and stabbed her with knives multiple times. They also stole her gold jewellery worth 1.5 tola”. According to the victim’s father, the videos have been recorded and shared on social media by a few people witnessing and recording the incident, and he has sought the Federal Investigation Department’s help in this regard as well.

ISLAMABAD Xinhua

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) is preparing to conduct the country’s first-ever digital population and housing census later this year, which would also be the seventh overall census of the country. The PBS told Xinhua on Tuesday that the bureau had completed a 15-day training of over 121,000 census enumerators at 992 centres across the country, which concluded on Saturday. “With the help of modern technology and accurate results, the digital census will inform important decisions about the population, leading to equal opportunities in jobs and access to resources across Pakistan,” said the bureau, adding the census will be conducted in two phases, including online self-enumeration followed by field enumeration. The bureau has also urged the people to participate in the census, saying “be a responsible citizen and play your role in building a brighter tomorrow for you and Pakistan.”