MULTAN: A woman and her sister were paraded naked in the Khangarh subdistrict of Muzaffargarh on Wednesday after she asked for a girl’s hand in marriage for her son.



According to details, Jamila* Mai’s son Asim*had a love affair with Asma*, daughter of Bilal Arayin, who lived in their neighbourhood.



According to residents of the area, Asim had been beaten twice by Asma’s brother when he tried to meet her. The matter got resolved by locals every time. Recently, Asma requested Asim to send his parents to ask her hand in marriage.



When Jamila and her sister Rukhsana* Bibi took Asim’s proposal, Bilal who has connections with a feudal family became angry and locked them up in a room and called his friends. The men tore the women’s clothes and recorded videos of them. Then they tied the women to a motorcycle rickshaw and paraded them naked in the area.



Jamila said that the men told her that they will teach her a lesson about honour and the importance of the Arayin tribe in the area. “He said, you are a Baloch and will remain a Baloch and you do not deserve any honour and respect,” she added.



The women were paraded in the area of Adaa Liaquatabad and were brought to a local bus/wagon terminal to make their punishment public.



An eyewitness told The Express Tribune that the men kept on filming the women while parading them.



The men ran away, leaving the women naked on the road, when residents of the area started protesting against them. According to the residents, they could not do much as the men belonged to a feudal family.



Another eyewitness Muhammad Iqbal told The Express Tribune that the police was to blame because they were reluctant to take any official action against the men.



The police came to resolve the issue three hours after residents of the area protested and blocked the national highway by burning tyres. They raided Bilal’s house but he was not found and instead Abdul Ghaffar Arayin and his son Irfan Arayin were arrested.



An FIR has been lodged under Section 354-A, 148 and 149 in Khangarh Police Station against Abdul Ghaffar Arayin, Irfan Arayin, Irshad Arayin, Iqbal Arayin, Munir Hussain, Mureed Hussain and five other unknown criminals on the application of Jamila.



SHO Khangarh Police Station Kamal Mustafa told The Express Tribune that three teams have been constituted to arrest the accused.



The arrested men, talking to The Express Tribune, denied the marriage proposal story and said that they were told that the women had entered the house to rob them, so they decided to punish them.



Representative of Human Rights Commission in Muzaffargarh, Amjad Ali Amjad, demanded that the accused should be prosecuted in an anti-terrorism court and sections of terrorism should be added in the FIR. He added that the civil society and other political leaders should also join them in protests against the incident.



Sub Inspector Chaudhry Ghulam Rasool told The Express Tribune that the incident involved a property dispute instead of a marriage proposal. He added that Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) local leader Amir Karamat gave protection to the women after the incident and brought them to the police station for legal activity.



*Names have been changed to protect identity