CCPO Umar Shiekh has once again landed himself in hot waters during a hearing of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights to talk about the motorway rape case, on Monday.
Lahore’s Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) spoke about the authorities’ response time to a distress call made by a woman when her car broke down on the M11 Motorway on September 9, saying at one point that it was approximately 28 minutes whereas the officers who reached the site had said they did so under six minutes.
The hearing was held to discuss a gang-rape incident earlier this month when two armed men allegedly raped a woman in front of her children when she was stranded on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway.
The horrific case has led to country-wide protests and calls for reforms in laws pertaining to the perpetrators of sexual assault.
In the hearing, CCPO Sheikh also said the motorway rape survivor was travelling without her husband’s permission.
To which, PPP Senator Krishna Kumari Kohli — a member of the Senate committee — reprimanded him over his comment, telling him not to make any such assumptions in the future. “Did this lady tell you,” she asked.
“Do not make assumptions like that,” Kishoo Bai told him when he said he had made a “guess”.
Not only that but Lahore’s top cop also forgot the name of Abid Ali, the prime suspect who has been in the wind for 20 days and whom the eight special teams — comprising personnel from all of the Punjab Police’s departments — have failed to apprehend despite spotting him at least thrice across the province.
