PM promises to bring new legislation against rapists in few days

Prime Minister Imran Khan Wednesday addressing a joint parliament session promised to bring new bill relating to rape cases in few days to give exemplary punishments to sex-offenders.

He said the Lahore-Sialkot Motorway gang-rape case has shocked the whole country and they were bringing a three tier strategy to address the issue including improvement in policing, registration of sex offenders and exemplary punishments.

He said registration of such offenders is necessary as they are repeated offenders and to stop the rapes and child abuse proper legislation is necessary. He said such cases destroy the family of the victim.

He said characters like Abid (Malhi), the main accused in the Motorway gang rape case, are serial offenders. He said Abid was also involved in a reported gang-rape case some six years ago and has been reported again for the same offence after six years but no one knows how many times he had committed such crime in these six years, which have not been reported.

He said under present legislation it was not easy to convict an accused in rape cases.

He also congratulated the parliament for approving the FATF-related legislation.

He said the legislation will help Pakistan to get out from the grey list.

PM Khan also criticised the opposition who according to him put their own interests ahead of national interests.

He said they inherited FATF grey list from the previous government and instead of working together to save Pakistan to fall into black list the opposition leaders tried to blackmail his government for their personal gains.

The premier said no one was anticipating how Pakistan has come out from the Covid-19 crisis and now the world is citing our example. He said Pakistan not only come out from the pandemic crisis but also saved its economy.

He said he had hoped that the opposition would have praised the government for its efforts during the pandemic but the only had criticised and could not acknowledge the government when the whole world is praising Pakistan’s efforts.

He said opposition leaders tried to blackmail the government over FATF-related legislation by proposing amendments in the NAB Ordinance that favoured them.

PM said when one makes black money in the country, the same money will be sent abroad to buy properties and make assets in the developed countries.

He said the whole third world countries are suffering from the menace of the money-laundering as according to a report every year $1000b is being laundered from poor countries to the developed world.

He said the opposition wanted the government to withdraw Ant-Money laundering Bill.

He questioned if they have not been involved in the money-laundering then why they are hesitant to pass the anti-money laundering bill.

He said according to a report every year $10billion is being laundered from Pakistan to the developed world. He added that if we can stop this amount to go abroad, Pakistan would not need to take the loans from the IMF.

He said he had provided his money trail in the court but the Opposition leaders failed to produce a single document to prove the legality of their properties.

He questions how they (PML-N) leaders have bought the properties in London’s most expensive locality. Similarly, he said there was a long list of properties associated with Asif Ali Zardari abroad, who he had bought through proxies.

He said the country could not prosper if the same ways continued in the country. He said opposition blames the government of taking more loans than other but they have not left any other choice as Pakistan had been already heavily indebted when the PTI-government came into the power.

He said more than half income of the government has been consumed to pay the interest of the debt taken by the previous governments and they had no other option but to go to the IMF to run the economy of the country.

PM also made it clear to the opposition that he would compromise on everything but no compromise would be made on corruption.