Pakistani rape victim, family, protest inaction

KARACHI, Feb 12 (Reuters) A teenaged Pakistani rape victim and her relatives took to the streets today to protest against what they said was the failure of police to arrest her alleged attackers.

Kainat Soomro, 13, and her father staged a sit-in outside a press club in the southern city of Karachi with 12 other relatives, eight of them women.

They said the girl had been kidnapped on her way home from school, in Mihar village in Sindh province, and raped by four men.

''The police have not arrested the people we named in our report filed last month,'' said the father, Ghulam Nabi, against a backdrop of two banners demanding justice and punishment for the accused.

Rape and violence against women are reported regularly in Pakistan, especially in rural areas, despite amendments to the country's laws made by the government last year.

The amendments took the crime of rape out of the sphere of Islamic laws -- under which a woman needed four male witnesses to an attack or she risked being prosecuted for adultery -- and put it under the penal code, making it easier for women to seek justice.

A tearful Nabi said he was determined to seek justice for his daughter.

''What father would like to do what we are doing? We feel ashamed going public but we will not rest until the people who soiled my daughter are arrested,'' he said.

A police official in Mihar village told Reuters that three of the four men identified by the father had been granted bail and the fourth man also had a bail hearing pending.

''We can only arrest them if the court cancels their bail,'' said the police official, Sikander Qadri.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said last week it had recorded more than 800 rape cases last year, about half of them of gang-rape and many involving minors. Many cases were belived to have gone unreported, it said.

The rights group called on the government to daw up comprehensive police for combatting violence against women.

REUTERS MQA RN1644