TT SINGH: A woman was prevented from committing suicide by policemen outside the office of District Police Officer in Toba Tek Singh on Friday.

The woman identified as Nabeela Kausar, a former employee at Toba Tek Singh District Jail, attempted self-immolation in protest against injustice.

Nabeela alleged that Jail Superintendent Asif Jam is harassing her and giving her death threats. She said she was dismissed from job for disobeying the unlawful orders. Police are interrogating her over the matter.

The incident comes four days after Sonia Bibi, who was in her late teens, self-immolated after police refused to act on her claim she was gang-raped by their colleagues in Muzaffargarh district of central Punjab province.

She was rushed to a hospital in the central city of Multan, but died of her injuries.

Two policemen were arrested and that the chief of the police station has been suspended for his inaction.

Muzaffargarh is the same district as the village where a woman named Mukhtaran Mai was horrifically gang-raped in 2002 in an attack that made headlines around the world.

Muzaffargarh district is also where 18-year-old Amina Bibi, who was not related to Sonia, doused herself with petrol and set herself alight in March last year in front of a police station in the village of Beet Meer Hazar.

A local court had dropped her rape claim after a police report said she had not been sexually assaulted.

INP