LAHORE – ASHRAF JAVED - As investigators cite porn movies the main reason behind many of the rape incidents reported this year yet, the biggest Punjab province has witnessed a sizeable surge in the crime as compared to the previous year. Many of the victims were teenage persons belonging to poverty-hit families with no or less schooling.
The provincial police registered over 2500 cases of rape besides more than 210 cases of gang-rape this year yet. Last year, the police had reported less than 2000 cases during the same period.
According to official data (from January to October 2012), out of total 2279 registered rape cases the police cancelled 662 cases while the accused in 1347 cases were prosecuted and challaned. Two gang-rape cases and 19 rape cases have been declared as untraceable in the police record this year as well.
The police investigators claim that many of the accused interrogated in connection with rape cases this year so far, confessed that they had committed the crimes after repeatedly watching porn movies, either by downloading the material from the internet or secretly playing videos at the residences in the absence of the parents.
“We have observed that many of the accused committed the crimes in frustration after watching porno movies by assaulting the teenage victims in the neighborhood. In several cases, the rapists appeared as they had been in the habit of watching porno videos,” a police investigator said who investigated several such crimes cases in Lahore during the last couple of years. The investigator, who preferred not to be named, also revealed that the accused mostly assaulted young children who were familiar with them.  In October, a teenage boy confessed to the police investigators that he had murdered his village fellow after molesting him in Kahn area in the suburb of Lahore. Asad also admitted that he had bricked Sajid Ali to death soon after the victim threatened that he would disclose the name of the rapist to his family.
At a news briefing last month, the provincial police chief had also pointed out porn movies were the major reason behind the surge in rape incidents. Inspector General of Police (IGP) Muhammad Habib-ur-Rehman further informed the mushroom of internet cafes or porno material easily available in the local markets incited adults and men to commit the heinous crime in the society.
Thousands of fast-speed internet cafes have been operating in the provincial capital like other parts of the country with no proper check, monitoring, or supervision, thanks to the authorities for not taking meaningful action against those spreading vulgarity in this conservative society. The police never launched a successful crackdown on the internet cafes as the law enforcing agency treat the porn-searching as a minor social crime.
According to a 2010 Fox News report, Pakistan had outranked all other nations in global searches for pornographic material last year. With above 20 million internet users and growing fast, Pakistan remains in the top countries in Google searches for pornographic terms. Narrowing the analytics for the search term to just 2011, Pakistan maintained the number one position, followed by India and Vietnam. Islamabad featured in the top 10 cities worldwide to search the word ‘sex’ in September and December 2011.
Provincial capital Lahore also featured in the top 10 cities for the months of January, March, April, May, June, July, September, October, November and December 2011.
Google Trends uses IP address information from server logs to make a best guess about where queries originated.
The 2010-Fox News report not only brought bad name to the terror-hit country but it also compelled the government to shut down such websites amid massive and countrywide crackdown on the sites. However, the internet usurers can still download such videos through the various search engines.
In November last year, on the directions of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), over 1000 pornographic websites were blocked by the internet service providers (ISP) in Pakistan.
Since the access of adults to the internet is growing fast, the government must take concrete measures to block sites, containing explicit content online. The police crackdown on the internet cafes selling sex videos for a few coins could also be helpful in restricting the misuse of the modern technology.