The authorities, acting on the orders of the President and Prime Minister, re-arrested four men involved in a high-profile gang-rape case on Friday after an appeal by the alleged victim, officials said. The four had been freed from jail on Tuesday despite a decision by the country's top court to reconsider their acquittal on charges of assaulting Mukhtaran Mai, 33, who has become a rights campaigner since the 2002 attack.
"I am happy over the decision," Mai told AFP on Friday, after Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz informed her during a meeting in Islamabad that the men had been taken back into custody.
President Pervez Musharraf, whom she urged to intervene in the case on Thursday and Aziz were both "keeping a track" of the situation, a press release issued by the Prime Minister's Office said.
"The Prime Minister assured Mukhtaran Mai that justice will prevail and her legal rights will be protected under the law," the statement added.
Mukhtaran Mai was raped for more than an hour on the orders of a tribal council at Meerwala in Punjab province in June 2002 as punishment for her brother's alleged affair with a woman of a powerful rival clan.
Six men were sentenced to death in August 2002 for the assault. But five of them were acquitted on appeal to Lahore High Court earlier this month, while the sixth had his punishment commuted to a life sentence. The decision shocked the country and sparked international outrage.
The Supreme Court has suspended the acquittals pending a new hearing at a date to be set. However, four of the five were released from jail on Tuesday despite the top court's decision to look afresh at the case.
Before their re-arrest the men had returned to Meerwala while the Supreme Court was waiting to fix the date for the hearing.
"They have been detained under maintenance of public order laws on the request of Mukhtaran Mai that her life was in danger if the accused were allowed to move freely," said Kashmala Tariq, chairperson of Pakistan's parliamentary commission for human rights, who accompanied Mai to the meeting.
Officials said an order banning the men from leaving the country had already been issued on Thursday. "They have been detained for a period of three months," added Ahsan Mahboob, police chief of Muzaffargarh city, which is near Meerwala.
Women in Pakistan and other parts of South Asia are often subject to brutal "honour punishments", from acid burning to rape and murder, paying for the alleged crimes of relatives.
After the rape, Mai embarked on a mission to improve girls' education in Pakistan, where 72 per cent of women are illiterate, using her compensation money to set up her district's first ever school for girls.
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