London, Sep 29 (IANS) Pakistan has witnessed a disturbing surge in sexual violence, with Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, recording 1,180 cases of sexual assaults during the first eight months of this year, a report has revealed.

Amid escalating violence against women, a 20-year-old woman from Azerbaijan was allegedly drugged and gang-raped by three men in an apartment in Lahore.

According to her police complaint, the Baku resident was in Pakistan on a business trip when she was allegedly raped on Saturday in the Defence Housing Authority area of Raiwind. She said that two women had invited her to dinner at a local restaurant, where they were later joined by three men, a report in leading British daily 'The Independent' highlighted.

The woman alleged that the men deceived her by offering to drop her and the two other women, but instead took her to an unidentified flat. She said she was drugged and gang-raped and later abandoned near the Ghazi Interchange, with the suspects allegedly taking her mobile phone and other valuables.

She claimed that the suspects were friends of the women who had invited her to dinner and were already present at the restaurant when she arrived. She said she would be able to identify the suspects by their faces, the report mentioned.

According to the report, in July, two foreign women, one from the Netherlands and the other from Venezuela, were allegedly abducted and raped in the same area. Police rescued them after about two hours and later arrested four men suspected of involvement in the crime.

The women had travelled to Pakistan at the invitation of alleged prime suspect Muhammad Raza Dar. They alleged that Dar and his accomplices abducted them on June 29, threatened and extorted them, and subjected them to sexual assault, the report noted.

A recent report stated that a rise in sexual violence incidents against women exposed the dangers faced by women in Pakistan and the failure of the institutions meant to protect them. These incidents of sexual violence against women involve both educated and uneducated men committing crimes like sexual assault, rape, torture, and killings.

On August 20, a 45-year-old woman was found dead at her residence in Pakistan's Rawalpindi with signs of torture. Her husband, Faisal Asghar Imam, a university medical professor and domestic worker, was arrested in the domestic abuse case, according to a report in Australia-based 'Pearls and Irritations'.

"With the recent rise in crimes, it is clearly visible how Pakistani women’s lives are increasingly under siege. In Quetta, Dr Mahnoor Nasir was attacked with acid inside Sandeman Provincial Hospital after rejecting a man’s advances, leaving her with severe burns and symbolising the lack of safety for professional women even in workplaces which are meant to be safe," wrote Pakistani writer and researcher Anam Zahra.

--IANS

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