The federal government has issued a notice to increase the price of petrol by Rs10.49 per litre. Apart from this, the price of high speed diesel (HSD) has been increased by Rs12.44 per litre.
The prices of kerosene and light diesel oil (LDO) have been increased by Rs10.95 and Rs8.84 per litre respectively. The new price of kerosene is Rs110.26 per litre and that of LDO is Rs108.35 per litre.
Prime Minister Imran Khan’s former wife Reham Khan has lost to former Special Assistant Sayed Zulfi Bukhari in a defamation case and has reportedly paid £50,000 as a contribution towards Bukhari’s costs and damages, reported Murtaza Ali Shah for Geo News.
In a statement attached with the court order, which she agreed to publish, Reham withdrew all allegations and rendered a full and unconditional apology.
Khan posted her apology on Twitter, in which she wrote, “On 6 and 7 December 2019, I published a video on my YouTube Channel, my Facebook page, and on my Twitter account in which I asserted that Sayed Zulfikar Abbas Bukhari, more commonly known as Zulfi Bukhari, was involved in a corrupt plan with the Prime Minister of Pakistan to sell or acquire the Roosevelt Hotel in New York at an undervalue for his benefit.”
“These allegations were false and untrue. Zulfi Bukhari, as I now understand, was not involved in any corrupt plan PM Khan to sell or acquire the Roosevelt,” she added.
Reham also posted her apology video on her youtube channel.
Zulfi, in a tweet, while reacting to Reham’s video said, “TRUTH ALWAYS WINS!”
In the settlement agreed between the two parties, Reham agreed that she will tweet the apology and clarification and pin it to her Twitter account for at least three consecutive days.
Reacting to the development, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said, “Reham being a liar was proved once again. She is actually a habitual liar.”
The Oil & Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) has sent a summary to Prime Minister Imran Khan for the approval to increase the price of petrol by Rs5.90 per litre, Geo News has reported. The petrol prices are likely to be increased on October 16, 2021 as per sources of Geo News.
If approved, The petrol prices can reach up to Rs133.2. In addition, Ogra has recommenced an increase in high-speed diesel price by Rs10.
In early October, the government had increased the price of petrol by Rs4 per litre taking its price to a record level of Rs127.30 per litre.
The prime suspect in the gang-rape case of an 18-year-old woman on the M-4 motorway in Gojra has been arrested, reported Geo News.
According to the Punjab Police, the main suspect is under interrogation, while a search is underway to find the other suspects.
Moreover, the police have confirmed that the rape survivor underwent medical examination and a DNA sample is being taken, adding that the action has been initiated to arrest the other suspects.
The suspects lured the young woman from Toba Tek Singh on the pretext of offering her a job.
In the First Information Report (FIR), the survivor’s paternal aunt said that her 18-year-old niece received a message on her mobile phone for a job interview in Gojra.
Her aunt said that upon reaching the place, the suspects put the survivor into a car, raped her on the motorway, and fled after throwing her at the Faisalabad Interchange.
In an interview with ‘Evening Standard‘, Jemima Goldsmith talks about her life in Pakistan, being married to Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan, her children, her work, and her friendship with Monica Lewinsky.
Jemima says she saw parallels between her life and Lewinsky’s. “During the interviews, she [Monica Lewinsky] was describing the FBI sting, and I suddenly realised that the same year, in Pakistan, I’d had to leave the country because I’d also been threatened with jail on politically trumped-up charges. I’d been accused of smuggling antiques, one of the few non-bailable offences in Pakistan,” said Jemima, who had been targeted by the Nawaz Sharif government in 1998-99.
“I realised there were parallels [with Lewinsky], marrying an older, politically powerful man and being used to undermine him. It is not a normal decision, aged 21, with all the freedoms and privileges that we grew up with, to essentially give those up, to go and live in extremely black and white culture,” said Jemima.
“Adopt a black and white way of life and doctrine, with a man who was twice my age and a born again Muslim,” added Jemima.
“At that point in my life, I found some reassurance in the prescriptiveness of that culture, that religion, that man. When my sister [India Jane Birley] was asked in an interview why I went there she said, very intelligently, moral certitude.”
“It was seen as this great amorous adventure and I am not sure that was the whole story. I would say, in retrospect, that moral certainty might have been more of a driving factor,” said Goldsmith on her marriage with PM Khan.
“I do feel like I have an ability to see things from both points of view in a way that possibly some of my contemporaries, both in Pakistan or here, don’t. I even feel like I am right in the middle of the Islamophobia and anti-Semitism debate because I’ve seen both at firsthand. I’ve got half-Pakistani Muslim children and I was a young girl who was politically targeted because of my Jewish ethnicity. It’s an interesting perspective.”
Jemima says there are more exciting projects in the pipeline as far as her work is concerned — a political documentary series and a comedy. She nurtures a long-standing ambition to write a book as well.
A 12-year-old boy, driving a car in Karachi, hit another vehicle at the city’s Memon Goth Road, ARY News reported.
The video shows a teenage boy along with four other kids, riding an expensive car and smashing it into another vehicle due to overspeeding.
The boys can be seen crying and apologising when they were caught by the owner of the other vehicle.
The owner in the video alleges that the boy said that his father is a policeman and they are coming from Memon Goth. The owner of the damaged vehicle informed the police as well, which arrived and caught the children.
The police said the children were released, later, after warning as the parents had assured not to let them drive again and keep an eye on them
Special Assistant to Prime Minister (PM) on Political Communication Dr Shahbaz Gill said that no one can become Nawaz Sharif. “Such people are born this way,” said Gill while responding to Maryam Nawaz’s earlier comments about PM Khan. Maryam Nawaz had said that PM Imran Khan should not try to be Nawaz Sharif.
“These people are dangerous for the entire nation,” Gill said in a press conference, along with the Minister of State for Climate Change Zartaj Gul and Member of the National Assembly (MNA) Maleeka Bokhari.
While criticising Maryam Nawaz, Gill stated, “No one is safe from Maryam’s shadow, including her father [Nawaz Sharif] and her uncle [Shehbaz Sharif].”
“If you are talking about magic, tell us what kind of djinns helped you transfer your money abroad, tell us about the witches who helped you build these apartments [in London], which djinns and witches printed dollars for you to buy these apartments,” asked Gill, responding to Maryam’s comments about magic.
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) questioned the government over its reluctant attitude to disclose details of the gifts presented to Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan since his appointment in 2018, reports Dawn.
Prior to this, the Pakistan Information Commission (PIC) had directed the Cabinet Division to “provide the requested information about the gifts received by PM Khan”.
However, the Cabinet Division argued that the matter did not fall under the Right of Access to Information Act, 2017.
“What is the harm in making it public if some country has given a necklace as a gift?” asked Justice Mian Gul Hassan Aurangzeb. He said that gifts received by the rulers of a country belonged to the nation and not to them, asking whether public officeholders would even receive those gifts if the public office did not exist.
Justice Aurangzeb asked: “Why doesn’t the government keep all the gifts in the museum? The government should make details of the gifts in the last 10 years public.”
He also said that the Centre should inform how many gifts had their valuation done by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). The government representative at the hearing requested time to respond, after which the court adjourned the hearing.
Earlier in September, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry revealed that Arab rulers who presented gifts to PM Khan “did not want their names to be made public”.
Toshakhana is a department established in1974 that stores precious gifts given to the rulers, parliamentarians, bureaucrats, and officials heads by the other governments and foreign dignitaries.
According to Dawn, it has valuables ranging from bulletproof cars, gold-plated souvenirs, expensive paintings, watches, ornaments, rugs and swords.
A doctor who allegedly made objectionable videos of nurses and lady doctors in Lahore’s Jinnah Hospital has been arrested by the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) on Tuesday, Geo News reported.
According to FIA officials, a victim woman, a resident of Chongi Amrsadho Lahore, had registered a complaint against Dr Abdullah Haris of Jinnah Hospital Lahore in the Cyber Crime Wing.
The suspect was blackmailing her with obscene videos of the victim.
Read More: Police arrest man for raping six-year-old cousin while brother guarded door
FIA officials said that the Cyber Crime Wing arrested the accused, Abdullah Haris, and seized two mobile phones.
Around 50 videos of several nurses and lady doctors were recovered from the doctor’s mobile. A case has been registered against the accused and further investigation is underway.
Pakistan has been plagued by episodes of rape and abuse over the years that it has now become common to the extent that people have started normalising such acts.
Back in 2002, Mukhtaran Mai’s gang-rape was one of the most horrifying gang-rape incidents that were reported.
Another major incident that took place in 2014 was the Layyah gang-rape case, where a 20-year-old girl after being gang-raped, was found hanging from a tree. Such inhumane incidents haven’t stopped even now.
A horrendous incident occurred on September 9, 2020, when a woman ran out of fuel on a motorway near Lahore. She was in the car with her two children.
Two men stole her money and the jewellery she had on her. They then raped her in front of her two children in a nearby field and escaped.
The incident sparked national outrage but what happened next? Before the arrest of the two culprits, questions like “Why was she out on the motorway so late without a brother or husband? Why didn’t she check her gas tank before leaving the house? And if she had to travel, why didn’t she take the more public GT Road route?” were asked because, sadly, in our country ‘getting raped’ is the woman’s fault. Apparently, a woman gets raped because ‘she was driving alone, on the wrong road, at the wrong time, in the wrong place’.
Later, the motorway rapists were sentenced to death but rape cases continued to rise in Pakistan.
On October 12, 2020, our team started counting rape cases on a daily basis from 13 different sources, which included these newspapers: Dawn, The News, The Express Tribune, The Nation, Pakistan Today, Daily Times, Nawa-e-Waqt, Daily Jang. And from these websites: ARY News, Geo News Samaa News Dunya News Aaj News.
It is to be noted that the given stats only include the reported incidents, not the ones that go unreported.
During the process, we have included reported rape cases of girls, boys, women, men and transgenders. Moreover, we have divided the rape cases province-wise, according to which Punjab till date has the highest number of rape cases, i.e. 936 rape cases and 44 attempted incidents.
It has been a year since we have started posting our rape template daily to analyse the record of reported rape cases. We have collected the data of the entire year (October 12, 2020 to October 12, 2021) and prepared slides of reported cases of each month provinces-wise.
Provinces Categorisation:
Sindh
Till date, Sindh has recorded a total of 60 reported rape cases in which 10 are attempted incidents. 11.6 per cent of cases were reported in the month of April and August as per the graph.
Punjab
Punjab has recorded a total of 936 reported rape cases in which 44 are attempted incidents until now. 13 per cent of cases were reported in August.
Islamabad
The capital has recorded a total of 13 reported rape cases which no attempted cases until now. The reported cases are relatively low as compared to other provinces’ data. However, 38.46 per cent of rape cases were reported in June this year.
Balochistan
Balochistan has reported a total of 11 reported rape cases. Most of the months show zero reported rape cases, according to the graph.
KPK
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) has reported a total of 20 reported rape cases of which 2 were attempted incidents. The numbers throughout the months are quite the same.
Deaths (province-wise)
As per the graph, the death rate was high in the month of January i.e.14.5 per cent.
Numbers of the recorded cases after the highlighted incidents of 2021
After the following incidents, we noticed an increase in the reporting of rape cases.
Mufti Aziz-ur-Rehman: sexual assault case
On June 17, police registered a criminal complaint against Mufti Aziz after a male student accused him of sexual abuse. In the aftermath of a viral graphic video that showed Mufti engaging in sexual intercourse with the male student, who was the victim, the action was taken against Mufti Aziz. After the incident, we noticed an increase of 10.7 per cent in the reporting of rape cases in the month of June.
Usman Mirza’s sexual assault on a couple
Usman Mirza was arrested on July 7. He was seen torturing and assaulting a couple. He was also seen stripping naked a woman in the video. The video sparked outrage across Pakistan. After the petrifying incident, an increase of 9 per cent was observed in the reporting of rape cases in the month of July.
Noor Mukadam’s murder case
On July 20, Noor Mukadam, daughter of former Pakistani diplomat Shaukat Mukadam, was raped, beheaded and murdered, in a posh neighbourhood of Islamabad in July. Noor’s murder led to nationwide protests. After her murder, as per the reported cases we have monitored, there was an increase of 12.6 per cent in the month of August.
There are many more cases that are still unreported due to various reasons.
According to The News, official statistics obtained from the Police, Law, and Justice Commission of Pakistan, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Women’s Foundation, and provincial welfare agencies in 2020 revealed that there are at least 11 rape cases reported in Pakistan every day with over 22,000 rape cases reported to the police across the country in the last six years.