Stubborn CCPO Lahore Says Women Should Not Go Out Without Male Family Members

A day after blaming the victim in the motorway rape case, Lahore CCPO Umar Sheikh has said that women shouldn't go out of their houses if they are not accompanied by any male family member.

He made these comments on Gharida Farooqi's show on News One.

According to the CCPO, the women should go out of their house with an adult male, but there is no male in the house, they should take a kid along. "But if they don't find anyone who could accompany them, then instead of going out at night, they should just go to sleep."

Motorway rape case:


A woman was allegedly raped by two men at gunpoint in front of her children after her car ran out of gas near Gujjarpura, Lahore.


Police said the woman, a resident of Gujranwala, was returning to the city from Lahore on Tuesday night when her car ran out of petrol.

Geo News reported that the woman called her husband, who advised her to call Motorway Police for help until he got there. However, the Motorway Police operator excused from helping the woman, saying the emergency beat had not been assigned to anyone.

As she was left to her own devices on the deserted road, two armed men approached the vehicle and smashed its windows. They then took the woman and her children out of the car and took them into a nearby field after cutting the fence along the road to rape her. The report said the woman was also deprived of Rs100,000, jewelry, and ATM cards.

Victim blaming by top cop:




Sheikh, who has been tasked to probe the rape of a woman on the motorway had questioned the choices of the woman, saying the woman should have taken a different route –a less deserted one– and checked her petrol tank before embarking on her journey.


Sheikh said that he was surprised that the woman — a mother of three travelling alone at night– chose to travel via Ring Road instead of taking the GT Road that was relatively ‘safe’.

He went on to say that if she had decided to go to Gujranwala via motorway, she should have checked her fuel tank because there were no petrol pumps on that route.