Pakistani court frees rapist after he agrees to marry victim

A Pakistani court has released a rapist from prison after he agreed to marry his victim, the AFP news agency reported on Wednesday (28). The decision, agreed with the woman’s family, reinforces the history of impunity in the Asian country in cases of this nature.

Dawlat Khan, 25, was sentenced in May to life imprisonment by a Buner district court in the northwest province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for raping a hearing-impaired woman. He had already been arrested weeks before, when the victim, who is not married, proved that Khan was the biological father of the baby he had had months earlier.

Since then, his lawyers have been trying to reach an out-of-court settlement with the victim’s family, mediated by a council of elders. In rural areas of Pakistan, councils known as ‘jirgas’ are made up of local elders and follow a moral code – their decisions have no legal value, but are taken into account by the courts.

In the second, the Supreme Court of Peshawar, capital of the province where the crime took place, accepted the agreement mediated by the council and decided on Khan’s release. “The rapist and the victim are from the same family,” Amjad Ali, Khan’s lawyer, told AFP, referring to their now husband and wife status.

The decision sparked outrage from human rights activists, who said the episode legitimizes sexual violence against women in a country where most rapes go unreported.

An investigation by Samaa TV, one of Pakistan’s main television stations, found that 21,900 women were raped in the country from 2017 to 2021, which means that a Pakistani woman is raped every two hours.

In comparison, according to the Brazilian Public Security Forum, a woman was raped, on average, every ten minutes in Brazil in 2021.

The difference, however, is explained by the fear of Pakistani women in denouncing the crime. Due to the associated social shame, few cases are registered, and the low conviction rates are, in part, a result of mistakes made during investigations, poor prosecution techniques and out-of-court settlements.

According to ‘Asma Jahangir Legal Aid Cell’ – a group that provides legal assistance to vulnerable women – the rate of rape convictions is below 3% of cases that go to trial. In 2020, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) ranked Pakistan first among 75 countries with anti-women bias in courts of law.

“This case signifies the approval of rape, the facilitation of rapists and the rape mentality by the court,” lamented Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, a lawyer and human rights defender. “It is something contrary to the basic principles of justice and the law of the country, which does not recognize such an agreement,” she added.

The Pakistan Human Rights Commission, for its part, was horrified by the decision.