Pakistani PM orders probe into woman's claims she was raped by police

Pakistan's prime minister on Tuesday ordered a probe into claims from a 23-year old woman that she was kidnapped and raped by police in retribution for attempting to lobby lawmakers over alleged police corruption.

The mother-of-two came to national attention in April when she was arrested and briefly detained for mistakenly trespassing inside Parliament in Islamabad. She had wandered through a security cordon when she sought to contact lawmakers to help her husband, whom she alleges was framed by police seeking to extort money.

In an interview in The News daily on Tuesday, the woman claimed that armed men later seized her for 15 days and a police officer raped her for seeking to publicize the case.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Tuesday told Parliament he was ordering an investigation into the allegations the latest in a series of high profile rape cases in Pakistan and would punish those found to be involved.

The woman says her husband was arrested in Faisalabad, an industrial city in the eastern Punjab province, for allegedly forging documents for stolen vehicles. She claims police didn't release him even though they were paid a big bribe. She says her husband is now missing.

The Faisalabad police Chief Khalid Abdullah denied all the allegations.

"This woman is a liar ... her character is not good, and people where she lives are quite aware of it," he told The Associated Press.