Four-year-old girl 'raped, strangled' in Karachi
PAKISTAN - 19 JULY 2010
KARACHI: A four-year-old girl who went missing on Saturday was found dead in a football ground used as a garbage dump in the Upper Gizri area on Sunday, police said.
The child was allegedly raped and strangled to death, the police said on the basis of an initial post-mortem report. However, they said, a detailed autopsy report had been reserved by the medico-legal officer till the receipt of the findings of a chemical analysis.
The girls abduction, rape and murder sparked a violent protest in the area, as enraged people took to the streets, lit bonfires, hurled stones at moving vehicles and blocked the main road for vehicular traffic.
Her family members had approached the Clifton police station and informed the police about her disappearance on Saturday night. They told the police that she had gone to a nearby shop to buy something in the afternoon, but never returned.
The police along with her family members later carried out a search and finally found her body in the garbage dump in the Tanzeem Football Ground near Zamzama on Sunday morning.
The body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a post-mortem examination.
Quoting the initial post-mortem report, Clifton SP Tariq Dharejo told Dawn that apparently she was subjected to a sexual assault and then strangled to death. The autopsy was performed between 12noon and 1pm and doctors said she was killed about 13 or 14 hours before the post-mortem examination was conducted.The SP said that the detailed autopsy report might be issued on Monday.
The shocking revelation of the incident caused a breakdown of law and order in the Girzri area where the girls family resided.
Seeking strict action against the abductors, rapists and killers, the victims relatives along with area people took to the streets and blocked the Gizri-Zamzama intersection for more than two hours.
They condemned inaction of the police over what they cited as a third such incident in the area in the recent past. They deplored that the police had failed to arrest anyone responsible for the killings so far.
SP Dharejo said that he talked to the protesting people and assured them that the killers would be arrested very soon. We did not use force (to disperse the crowd). I assured the protesters that we will take every possible step to arrest the killers, and subsequently they ended their protest.
Speaking of the investigations, he said that the police believed that the girl knew the kidnapper and it was possibly the work of someone living close by. The garbage dump was not very far from her residence. It is being used by some drug addicts and we are trying to trace them to find out whether they saw anything during the night, the SP said.
He added that the police suspected that more than one person was involved in the crime. The girl might have been killed somewhere else and her body was thrown in the garbage dump. The police also used sniffer dogs to trace the killers but that did not prove very helpful, he said.
The victims family had not nominated anyone in the FIR, the SP said. However, the police investigators were questioning a few individuals to find any clue.
A case (FIR No 184/2010) was registered at the Clifton police station on the complaint of the victim girls grandfather, Rehmat Ali, against unidentified persons under Sections 302 (premeditated murder) and 364 (kidnapping) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
The police said that the section pertaining to rape would be incorporated in the FIR only after the confirmation of rape in the final post-mortem report.
Source: DAWN Media Group
PAKISTAN - 19 JULY 2010
KARACHI: A four-year-old girl who went missing on Saturday was found dead in a football ground used as a garbage dump in the Upper Gizri area on Sunday, police said.
The child was allegedly raped and strangled to death, the police said on the basis of an initial post-mortem report. However, they said, a detailed autopsy report had been reserved by the medico-legal officer till the receipt of the findings of a chemical analysis.
The girls abduction, rape and murder sparked a violent protest in the area, as enraged people took to the streets, lit bonfires, hurled stones at moving vehicles and blocked the main road for vehicular traffic.
Her family members had approached the Clifton police station and informed the police about her disappearance on Saturday night. They told the police that she had gone to a nearby shop to buy something in the afternoon, but never returned.
The police along with her family members later carried out a search and finally found her body in the garbage dump in the Tanzeem Football Ground near Zamzama on Sunday morning.
The body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a post-mortem examination.
Quoting the initial post-mortem report, Clifton SP Tariq Dharejo told Dawn that apparently she was subjected to a sexual assault and then strangled to death. The autopsy was performed between 12noon and 1pm and doctors said she was killed about 13 or 14 hours before the post-mortem examination was conducted.The SP said that the detailed autopsy report might be issued on Monday.
The shocking revelation of the incident caused a breakdown of law and order in the Girzri area where the girls family resided.
Seeking strict action against the abductors, rapists and killers, the victims relatives along with area people took to the streets and blocked the Gizri-Zamzama intersection for more than two hours.
They condemned inaction of the police over what they cited as a third such incident in the area in the recent past. They deplored that the police had failed to arrest anyone responsible for the killings so far.
SP Dharejo said that he talked to the protesting people and assured them that the killers would be arrested very soon. We did not use force (to disperse the crowd). I assured the protesters that we will take every possible step to arrest the killers, and subsequently they ended their protest.
Speaking of the investigations, he said that the police believed that the girl knew the kidnapper and it was possibly the work of someone living close by. The garbage dump was not very far from her residence. It is being used by some drug addicts and we are trying to trace them to find out whether they saw anything during the night, the SP said.
He added that the police suspected that more than one person was involved in the crime. The girl might have been killed somewhere else and her body was thrown in the garbage dump. The police also used sniffer dogs to trace the killers but that did not prove very helpful, he said.
The victims family had not nominated anyone in the FIR, the SP said. However, the police investigators were questioning a few individuals to find any clue.
A case (FIR No 184/2010) was registered at the Clifton police station on the complaint of the victim girls grandfather, Rehmat Ali, against unidentified persons under Sections 302 (premeditated murder) and 364 (kidnapping) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
The police said that the section pertaining to rape would be incorporated in the FIR only after the confirmation of rape in the final post-mortem report.
Source: DAWN Media Group
