A sessions court in Lahore has indicted eight suspects, including Muhammad Raza Dar, in a case involving the alleged gang rape and kidnapping of two foreign women, moving one of Pakistan's most closely watched criminal cases towards trial.

Additional Sessions Judge Rafaqat Ali Gondal framed the charges on Tuesday. All eight accused, who are in judicial custody, were produced before the court and pleaded not guilty. The judge directed the prosecution to present its witnesses on 9 December, when the formal trial proceedings are due to begin.

Raza Dar is the grandson of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar. The case has drawn intense public attention because of that connection, and because police had earlier cleared him and four other suspects of the sexual assault charges in their investigation report.

What the court was told

According to the first information report, the two women, one from the Netherlands and one from Venezuela, met Raza Dar in Singapore in October 2025, where they entered into a business partnership with him. They arrived in Lahore on 29 June 2026 after Dar arranged their travel visas, and were allegedly taken to a house in Y-Block, Defence, where they were held at gunpoint.

The FIR alleges that the women were subjected to sexual assault and severe physical abuse involving weapons, while the suspects demanded a ransom of 1.5 million US dollars. It further alleges that the accused threatened to kill the women and sell their body parts if the demands were not met.

The ordeal ended, according to the FIR, after one of the women managed to contact her father in the Netherlands, who alerted Lahore Police through the 15 emergency helpline. Police then launched a rescue operation and recovered the two women within two hours.

The police report gives a partly different account of how the dispute began. It says the women told investigators they had invited Raza Dar to invest in a cryptocurrency business, that he invested more than 500,000 US dollars, and that the women then failed to return any profit or the amount itself. On that account, Dar invited the women to Pakistan on the pretext of a meeting with another investor. The report says the women stayed at a hotel in Islamabad and travelled to the Murree hill station before being taken to a house in Defence Housing Authority, Lahore, where they were allegedly detained and forced to transfer 19,500 US dollars. Police said the women escaped when their kidnappers were taking them to Lahore airport and their vehicle had an accident on the way.

The case was registered at the Defence C Police Station under sections relating to alleged rape and kidnapping. The women recorded their statements before a magistrate and have since left for their home countries.

The police clean chit and the medical evidence

The indictment is significant because it comes after Punjab Police had already given a clean chit to Raza Dar and four of his accomplices. In a challan submitted to the trial court, Defence-C police cleared the five men of sexual assault charges, implicating them instead in minor offences including illegal detention and extortion.

The police charged three other suspects, described as low-paid employees of Raza Dar, with sexually assaulting the women. Yet the medical examination had confirmed that the foreign women were raped, a finding that sat uneasily with the police conclusion that the prime suspect and his associates bore no responsibility for the assault itself.

By framing charges against all eight accused, the sessions court has ensured that each of them will now face trial on the charges as framed, rather than on the narrower version of events set out in the police challan. The court also adjourned the suspects' bail petitions until 11 November, warning the prosecution to present its arguments or have the petitions decided on the case record.

What happens next

With the charges framed and the accused having pleaded not guilty, the case now turns on the prosecution evidence. Witnesses are due to begin giving evidence on 9 December, and the trial will test two competing accounts of a business relationship that began in Singapore and ended, according to the complainants, in detention and assault in Lahore.

For now, all eight men remain in judicial custody. The allegations against them remain unproven, and the trial will determine whether the prosecution can establish the charges beyond reasonable doubt. But the indictment itself marks a turning point: a case in which police had sought to narrow the blame will now be heard in full, with all eight accused in the dock together.

Sources: Centreline and The Daily Jagran.