Pakistani NGOs workers carry placards during a protest against the rape of a five year old girl, in Lahore on September 19, 2013. (AFP Photo / Arif Ali)
A 13-year-old Pakistani girl managed to dig her way out of a shallow grave after being raped and buried alive by her attackers. A court has ordered an investigation into the incident after police allegedly refused to pursue the case.
The teenage girl was on her way to a Koran seminary in the province of Punjab when she was abducted by two unknown assailants. The men then took her to a remote location and raped her until she lost consciousness. Believing her to be dead, the attackers then buried the 13-year-old in a shallow grave.
When the girl regained consciousness she was forced to dig her way out of the grave. She was later transferred to a nearby rural health center.
When the victim’s father, Siddique Mughal, reported the incident to local police, the case was reportedly ignored, writes the Times of India. This prompted the intervention of the Lahore high court chief justice’s Complaint Cell, who ordered a district and sessions judge from the Toba Tek Singh district to probe the matter.
In Pakistan many child abuse cases are ignored by authorities and fall by the wayside. A non-profit organization, Sahil, that works to stamp out child abuse in Pakistan estimates that every day more than four children are abused in some way in the country.
In addition the group believes that cases of child sexual abuse covered by the media increased from 668 in 2002 to 2,788 in 2012.
“We still think these statistics are just a fraction of what’s going on,” Manizeh Bano, the group’s executive director told the Washington Post.
Yogita Limaye: “There are fears that the number of dead could rise”
Nineteen of the 22 children who died after eating a tainted free school meal in India’s Bihar state have been buried in and around the school grounds.
Angry parents say they want the graves to serve as a reminder that the children died due to state negligence.
A total of 47 primary school children fell ill after consuming the meal of rice and soybeans on Tuesday.
A doctor at the local hospital said a chemical used in pesticides was the likely cause of contamination.
Officials said the headmistress of the government school, in Dharmasati Gandaman in Saran district, had fled.
The Mid-Day Meal Scheme provides free food for students, but often suffers poor hygiene.
It was introduced to combat hunger and boost school attendance, and reaches 120 million children in 1.2 million schools across the country, according to the government.
In a country where nearly half of the children are undernourished and struggle to go to school, the school meal programme is a weapon to tackle hunger and illiteracy.
Economists believe the programme bolsters primary school enrolment and attendance, eliminates hunger, enables children from diverse class and caste backgrounds to share a meal together and bury social prejudices, and provides children with hygiene and nutritional education.
There is enough evidence to prove, they say, that the programme, by and large, has been a success.
That’s precisely why the deaths of more than 20 school children after consuming contaminated free meals in Bihar state is shocking.
‘Government’s negligence’
Angry parents and villagers have buried three children inside the school campus while 16 others have been buried in a nearby area, Patna-based journalist Amarnath Tewary reports from Dharmasati Gandaman village.
“People must not ever forget that our children died inside the school because of the government’s negligence,” Rangeela Prasad Yadav, whose 11-year-old grand-daughter Mamata was among the dead, told the BBC.
More than 100 people from the surrounding villages have attended the funerals and many are still standing around, mourning their loss.
Inside the school, books are strewn around and the kitchen where the deadly meal was cooked has been demolished by angry villagers.
On Wednesday, hundreds of parents and villagers protested by setting four police vehicles on fire.
Armed with poles and sticks, they blocked streets and locked railway gates, halting the movement of trains.
Inside the school, books are strewn around and the kitchen has been demolished
As well as the protests in Dharmasati Gandaman – where the school is located – a crowd set fire to a bus and damaged private property in Chhapra.
Officials said the children showed symptoms of poisoning by organo-phosphorus, a compound also used as a pesticide for crops.
Bihar State Education Minister PK Shahi told a news conference the cook told him the school had bought a new type of cooking oil and she thought the oil looked “discoloured and dodgy”.
She drew it to the attention of the headmistress – who was in charge of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme at the school and had been transferred there recently – who said the “oil was home-made and safe to use”.
The minister said the oil had been bought from the grocery store run by the husband of the headmistress.
Mr Shahi said the grocery store owner and other men in his family had fled.
An inquiry has begun and 200,000 rupees ($ 3,370) in compensation has been offered to the families of each of those who died.
Bihar is one of India’s poorest and most populous states.
The Mid-Day Meal was first introduced for poor and disadvantaged children in the southern city of Chennai in 1925.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela addresses the media in front the house of her former husband and former South African President Nelson Mandela in Soweto, Friday, June 28, 2013. Members of Nelson Mandela’s family as well as South African Cabinet ministers have visited the hospital where the 94-year-old former president is critically ill. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela addresses the media in front the house of her former husband and former South African President Nelson Mandela in Soweto, Friday, June 28, 2013. Members of Nelson Mandela’s family as well as South African Cabinet ministers have visited the hospital where the 94-year-old former president is critically ill. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Children from a creche pray for the health of Nelson Mandela outside the entrance to the Mediclinic Heart Hospital where former South African President Nelson Mandela is being treated in Pretoria, South Africa Friday, June 28, 2013. Nelson Mandela’s health improved overnight and although his condition remains critical it is now stable, the South African government said on Thursday. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela addresses the media in front the house of her former husband and former South African President Nelson Mandela in Soweto, Friday, June 28, 2013. Members of Nelson Mandela’s family as well as South African Cabinet ministers have visited the hospital where the 94-year-old former president is critically ill. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela addresses the media in front of the house of her former husband and former South African President Nelson Mandela in Soweto, Friday, June 28, 2013. Members of Nelson Mandela’s family as well as South African Cabinet ministers have visited the hospital where the 94-year-old former president is critically ill. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela embraces a wellwisher after making a statement at the house of her former husband and former South African President Nelson Mandela in Soweto, Friday, June 28, 2013. Members of Nelson Mandela’s family as well as South African Cabinet ministers have visited the hospital where the 94-year-old former president is critically ill. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
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JOHANNESBURG (AP) — As Nelson Mandela remained in critical condition in hospital Friday, a family feud over where the 94-year-old former president should be buried went to the courts, according to South Africa’s national broadcaster.
Mandela’s oldest daughter, Makaziwe, and 15 other family members have pressed a court application to get Mandela’s grandson to return the bodies of three of Mandela’s children to their original graves in the eastern rural village of Qunu, according to the SABC.
The grandson, Mandla Mandela, acknowledges having reburied the three bodies 20 kilometers (13 miles) away in the Mvezo village, where he plans to create a Mandela shrine, hotel and soccer stadium, according to the South African Press Association.
Grandson Mandla Mandela has until Saturday to respond to the court filing, reports said.
The anti-apartheid leader built his retirement home in Qunu and was living there until his repeated hospitalizations which started at the end of last year. Nelson Mandela attended the burial of his son at the family plot in Qunu in 2005, and it was widely expected that the leader himself will be buried there.
But his grandson exhumed the bodies of Mandela’s three children and moved them to nearby Mvezo, which is the former president’s birthplace and where the grandson holds authority as chief.
Eldest daughter Makaziwe and other Mandela family members want the family bodies returned to their original graves in Qunu, according to the reports.
The family court struggle came as Mandela’s ex-wife said that he had improved in recent days, but remained critical.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela gave the update Friday while speaking to journalists outside Mandela’s former home in Soweto.
“I’m not a doctor but I can say that from what he was a few days ago there is great improvement,” said Madikizela-Mandela, who is a member of South Africa’s Parliament.
Madikizela-Mandela pleaded with the media to “understand the sensitivities and the feeling of the family.”
His daughter Makaziwe Mandela was among the family members who arrived at the Pretoria hospital on Friday. The ministers of health and defense also visited, the South African Press Association reported.
Outside the Pretoria hospital on Friday, a man flying a drone-like object with a camera attached was led away by several policemen, adding to an already heightened atmosphere where well-wishers continue to gather to pray for Mandela.
Mandela was taken to the hospital on June 8 to be treated for what the government said was a recurring lung infection. South Africans have held prayers nationwide, and many have left flowers and messages of support outside the hospital as well as his home in Johannesburg.
On Thursday, the office of South African President Jacob Zuma said Mandela’s health had improved overnight, and that his condition was critical but stable.
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Associated Press writer Wandoo Makurdi contributed to this report.
