LAHORE – Police are conducting raids in different areas of Punjab capital to arrest Mufti Azizur Rehman, who has absconded after being booked for sexually assaulting a seminary student.
A raid was also conducted at a madrassah (religious school) in Lahore’s Township area but the suspect along with his sons managed to escape before the police party reached there.
Social media users and the public have demanded public hanging of the suspect amid a Twitter trend that reads as “Punish Rapist Publicly”.
Mr Prime Minister, I request you to plz look into this matter ,, it's not something that we should let go…@ImranKhanPTI#Punish_Rapist_Publicly pic.twitter.com/74ydr9R2te
— Saad Baloch✨ (@BeiNgInSafiAN_) June 18, 2021
https://twitter.com/ad_sah1/status/1405750665746337794
Meanwhile, Allama Hisham Elahi Zaheer, a known religious cleric, has demanded that Mufti Aziz should be hanged publicly at Minar-e-Pakistan.
Hisham Elahi Zaheer also lamented surge in such incidents across the country.
Earlier this week, police registered a case against the former JUI-F leader and former Jamia Asad ul Farooq cleric under sections 377 and 506 for sexually abusing one of his teenage seminary students.
The complainant who hailed from Swat alleged that a 70-year-old religious cleric blackmailed him and another student after hurling false accusations about cheating in exams.
The FIR reads that Mufti Azizur offered the victim to have sexual relations with him if denied he threatened to terminate him from seminary. Adding that, he also informed the administration about the gruesome incident but nobody listened to him. It further added that he secretly filmed the cruel act as he got no other options to end the sexual assault.
The complainant also mentioned that he is getting life threats from the sons of the expelled cleric as some of the close acquaintances of Aziz chased him outside the seminary and uttered threats at him.
On Wednesday, a clip of Aziz surfaced all over social media in which he can be seen sexually abusing one of his students.
A video message was also making rounds on social media with the footage by the teary-eyed victim, in which he mentioned life threats after exposing the influential cleric.
Soon after the incident, Mufti Aziz, whose membership has been suspended by his party, also shared his side of the story in a video clip.
Aziz has said that this video was made intentionally to defame him as the administrators of the religious seminary who were his pupils felt threatened that he might control the seminary.
After consultation, the Jamia administration based on the video advised him and his son to leave the campus. The seminary also announced that it would distance itself from any of Rehman’s act or statement.
Video of a cleric sexually abusing students at Lahore seminary goes viral
