Peshawar, Sep 13 (NationPress) In a deeply disturbing event, a 21-year-old Afghan woman was reportedly gang-raped by five men in a refugee camp located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Haripur city, as per local media reports on Saturday.

The First Information Report (FIR) reveals that the victim was heading to Camp-16 for her job when five men forcibly seized her, taking her into adjacent fields where they assaulted her for two hours.

According to the FIR, the attackers also stole Rs3,000 in cash and a gold nose pin from her. She was able to identify the suspects: Bacha, Nadi, Rozi Khan, Javed, and Naseer. The report mentioned that when she attempted to fend them off, the men physically beat her, resulting in injuries.

The Khalabat police have charged all five suspects under Section 375A of the Pakistan Penal Code, which stipulates that if a rape is perpetrated by multiple individuals with a shared intent, each offender may face the death penalty or life imprisonment, the report detailed.

This incident has ignited outrage among local inhabitants, with the victim’s family calling for severe punishment for the offenders.

Notably, Pakistan has classified Haripur, Rawalpindi, Attock, Islamabad, and Murree as “safe zones” amidst the ongoing crackdown on vulnerable Afghan refugees who are being forcibly repatriated.

The UN refugee agency reports that since April, over 483,700 Afghans have returned from Pakistan to Afghanistan, with 145,200 of them returning in August alone, including around 55,000 in the last four days of that month.

Since April 1, approximately 57,300 individuals have been arrested and detained, even including PoR cardholders. In August, around 9,000 arrests were recorded, compared to about 3,400 in July.

A UN document indicated that as of September 4, at least 531,700 Afghans have returned from Pakistan in 2025.