Yasir Shah cleared in 14-year-old girl rape case
By Muhammad JuniadPublished On 06 Jan 2023
Pakistan Test cricketer Yasir Shah’s name has been removed from the First Information Report (FIR) regarding the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl.
Shah, who was named with his friend in the case last month, was cleared after the victim stated that he had nothing to do with the incident.
The case had been booked under Section 376 of the Pakistan Penal Code (Punishment for rape), Section 292B, and 292C of the PPC that deals with the circulation of pornographic content.
Shah was relieved after being cleared in the case as it was affecting his cricketing activities.
“Thanks to Allah Almighty, everything is clear now,” Yasir Shah told Cricket Pakistan.
“Now I can give all my focus and attention to the game. Due to this case, there was a lot of disturbance which also affected cricket activities,” he added.
The leg-spinner is also looking forward to playing the home Test series against Australia, later this year.
“I am now fully fit and looking forward to Australia tour of Pakistan. I played a four-day match and now I will try to give the best performance when I get a chance in the series against Australia in March,” he said.
Details of the incident
An FIR was registered on the complaint of the victim’s aunt at Shalimar Police Station in Islamabad on December 19, 2021.
The complainant, who is a resident of the F-10 area in Islamabad, said that she has known Yasir Shah for quite some time. On June 1 this year when she went to Lahore to attend a party on Yasir Shah’s invitation, she took her 14-year-old niece with her.
The woman told the police that two or three months after returning from the party, she noticed that her niece seemed “unwell and disturbed”.
When I asked her repeatedly, my niece told me that Yasir’s friend Farhan took her number and later on proposed to her, the complainant said. He used to get Yasir talk to her, she added. “On August 14, when she was returning from tuitions, Farhan made her get into a taxi and took her to a flat in F-11 where he raped her at gunpoint and even made a video,” the aunt said, as the police recorded this in the FIR.
Farhan threatened the child that if she told anyone about this, he would make her video go viral and would also kill her, the FIR states.
The accused got Yasir Shah to threaten that if she lodged a complaint, he would have her incriminated in a false case as he was a famous player and had contacts, states the FIR.
A month later, Farhan blackmailed her again into meeting him and raped her again. This time, Farhan tried to coerce her to enter into a relationship with Yasir and made her talk to him over phone, the FIR states.
The complainant said that when she came to know about this, she contacted Yasir Shah on September 11 or 12 over WhatsApp. The cricketer was in West Indies at that time.
The aunt told the police that Yasir Shah made fun of the matter and said that the child was beautiful and he liked underage girls. He said that he would get the child married to his friend and this would benefit both him and his friend. The complainant alleges that Yasir Shah threatened to have her killed.
According to the FIR, when the woman said that she would go to the police, the cricketer offered to bear all the child’s expenses if the aunt married the child to Farhan. He would do this till she turned 18 years old and would even transfer the ownership of a flat in her name.
The complainant said she met Farhan few days ago upon Yasir Shah’s request but Farhan threatened her. She said that Yasir was coming to Islamabad and wanted to meet her on December 22. Yasir had asked her to bring the child to his flat, she told the police.