Hundreds of men in Pakistan investigated over mass sexual assault on woman

From the Guardian and India Today.

Police in Pakistan have opened cases against hundreds of unidentified men after a young woman was sexually assaulted and groped by a crowd of more than 400 men in a park in Lahore as she made a TikTok video.

The shocking assault was captured on several videos, which went viral and showed a mob descend on the woman as she was in Lahore’s Greater Iqbal park making a TikTok video with friends. In broad daylight, the men picked up the young woman and tossed her between them, tearing her clothes and assaulting and groping her.

The woman registered a case against 300 to 400 unidentified persons with Lahore police, according to the case report seen by the Guardian.

“The crowd pulled me from all sides to such an extent that my clothes were torn. I was hurled in the air. They assaulted me brutally,” the woman said in a statement to the police. She said the crowd also stole her money, earrings and a phone.

The country’s information minister, Fawad Chaudhry, said arrests were being made. Some perpetrators have been identified through CCTV footage and eyewitness accounts. Chaudhry said: “We are working on it full throttle. Prime minister has taken notice also.”

India Today has one of the video clips taken of the assault here as part of their First Up Morning Prime Time (English language); I can’t embed it into othis blog post. It includes a description of the assault and an interview with the victim later.

The victim, a local Tik Toker, was tossed into the air, groped, slapped, and her clothes were torn off by the reportedly 400 strong mob. Media reports quited the vicitm as saying that a huge crowd of men surrounded her to humiliate and assault her in a park where she was filming a video on the occasion of Pakistan’s Independence day. 

The point many are making is that of a crowd of 400 men, not one tried to stop the assault or help her.

It’s happened in Egypt and Cologne; where else? Where is next?