A 20-year-old woman from Azerbaijan was allegedly drugged and gang-raped by three men in an apartment in Lahore.
The Baku resident, who was in Pakistan for business, was allegedly raped in the Defence Housing Authority area in Raiwind on Saturday, according to her police complaint.
She was approached by two women who offered to take her out for dinner at a local restaurant, where they were joined by three men, the complaint said.
As they were leaving, she alleged, the men offered to drop her and the two other women in their car, but instead took her to an unidentified flat. There she was drugged and gang-raped until 2am before being abandoned near the Ghazi Interchange, according to the complaint. She said the suspects took away her mobile phone and other valuables.
Lahore’s deputy inspector general of police, Faisal Kamran, said the three suspects had been identified and police teams had been formed to track them down. He also said police had confiscated the vehicle that was allegedly used in the incident.
The woman alleged the suspects were friends of the women who had taken her to dinner and that they were already at the restaurant when she reached. She said she could identify them by their faces.
Police have registered a case against the three suspects and put them on the Provisional National Identification List, which is a 30-day travel restriction to stop individuals from leaving the country.
Lahore has been grappling with a wave of sexual violence. The capital of Punjab province has recorded 1,180 cases of sexual assault in the first eight months of this year.
In July, a woman from the Netherlands and another from Venezuela were allegedly abducted and raped in the same area. They were rescued by police after two hours, and their four suspected attackers were subsequently arrested.
The women had arrived in Pakistan at the invitation of the alleged prime suspect, Muhammad Raza Dar. They claimed that they were abducted by him and his accomplices on 29 June, threatened, exorted, and sexually assaulted.
