LAHORE, Jun 3: A Pakistan high court on Wednesday upheld death sentences of two persons who raped a French woman in Punjab province over five years ago.
The horrific gang rape of the French woman in September 2020 on the Lahore-Sialkot Motorway had sparked massive nationwide protests demanding swift justice and condemning Punjab police for victim blaming.
“The Lahore High Court (LHC) today dismissed appeals of the two men convicted in infamous rape case of the French woman of Pakistani-origin in 2020 in Lahore and upheld the trial court’s verdict of awarding them death sentences,” a court official said.
The 32-year-old mother and her three children were stranded on the motorway near Lahore after her car ran out of fuel. Two-armed men broke into her vehicle, robbed her and dragged her to a nearby field, where they raped her at gunpoint in front of her children.
In March 2021, an anti-terrorism court in Lahore handed down death sentences besides life imprisonment and multiple jail terms to the two rapists — Abid Ali alias Malhi and Shafqat Ali alias Bagga.
They had challenged their convictions in the LHC the same year. A two-member bench of LHC comprising Justice Syed Shahbaz Ali Rizvi and Justice Tariq Mehmood Bajwa on Wednesday issued the verdict after the prosecution and defence concluded their arguments on the pleas of the rapists. (PTI )
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