The Sindh High Court ordered the deputy inspector general of police and SSP Mirpurkhas to appear before the chief justice on February 15 in the case of the kidnapping of two women who were paraded naked and then reported to have been gang raped in a village near Naukot town of district Mirpurkhas, Sindh.

On February 6, two women, aged 14 and 19, related to one another through marriage, were reported kidnapped. They were recovered the next day after a police raid at a house in the area, Senior Superintendent of Police Asad Chaudhry was quoted in a Dawn report as saying.

He said the women belonged to the Rajput community and were kidnapped and raped in captivity.

The SSP said the women and their families had accused men from the Tungri community of the crime, adding that the offence had been committed in revenge after a married woman from the Tungri community had eloped with a man from their community.

The medico-legal examination of the two women at a rural health centre confirmed they were subjected to rape, the SSP said.

He, however, dispelled reports on social media that they had been subjected to gang rape.

A close relative of the abducted women filed a first information report against 20 men of the Tungri community.

According to the report, the FIR was registered under sections 324 (attempt to murder), 365-B (kidnapping or abducting with the intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person), 504 (intentional insult with the intent to provoke the breach of peace), 452 (house-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint), 440 (mischief committed after preparation to cause death or hurt), 395 (punishment for dacoity), 398 (attempt to commit robbery or dacoity when armed with a deadly weapon) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of a common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code and section 3(ii) of the Prevention of Trafficking Act, 2018.

The FIR states that men from the Tungri community forcefully entered the complainant's house, looted valuables at gunpoint and took two women away on February 6.

Narrating the incidents of February 6, police and protesting villagers said that at least “two dozen men, some of them carrying firearms, broke into a house in Nafees Nagar, ransacked the furniture and fixtures present inside, collected cash and other valuables and kidnapped the two girls”.

"We had to stage a protest on Naukot Road and block the road to build pressure for the recovery of the girls," father of one of the girls quoted in the report.

They started a protest on Monday and several hundred of the Rajput community's members blocked a section of the Naukot-Mirpurkhas road, demanding immediate recovery of the kidnapped girls and the arrest of the culprits.

The sit-in caused disruption in the movement of vehicular traffic for several hours.

Meanwhile, the police recovered the girls with the help of informers during a raid on a house.

The women were escorted to the Nafees Nagar police post where they narrated their ordeal. Later they were taken to the Naokot police station.

However, according to the father’s version in the report, the girls were initially taken to the house of a policeman, Assistant Sub-Inspector Gulzar Tungri, of the Nafees Nagar police post.

One of the suspects identified by the women as Nawab had “subjected one of the girls to criminal assault”, while another suspect, Ali Nawaz, raped the other girl, said SSP Chaudhry.

Out of the 20 suspects nominated in the FIR, so far the police arrested Nawab and 11 others. The primary suspect Ali Nawaz was at large, said the SSP.