All of them should be interrogated including the parents.
Actually there were coming out many unverified hearsay stories about childs temporary custody in the media.
What i had gathered from channels was:
1. Her father said in an interview that their family is living in joint family system he left the child with family.
2. A tv morning show claimed she was living at khalas place.
3. Girls fathers elder brother was asked in a tv show whether girl was living with maternal uncle. to which he said she was going to khala/maternal aunts place which created msiunderstanding and made it look like she was in custody of Khala i.e., mothers sister.
Anyways, here is the info i gathered.
She was left in custody of her fathers family , her fathers brothers.
@Areesh that cousin part watch this video from hour 1:40:00 uptil next two minutes. Her taya talks about her leaving for Quran classes.
Also this link from dawn also describe iin more details
https://www.dawn.com/news/1382351/footprints-how-long-will-it-be-till-you-forget-zainab
Some very interesting information i am marking in bold.
As the sun began to set on Jan 4, six-year-old Zainab Amin performed her wuzu before setting out to her maternal aunt’s place for Quran lessons.
“Zainab and her cousin, Osman, used to go to their khala’s house — which is a five-minute walk — every day around 6.30pm for around half an hour. Just like any other day, I gave the children milk and they headed off for their lessons.”
“This was part of her daily routine,” her paternal aunt, Anis Fatima, tells me at their family home, located in a narrow street off Haji Ali Road in Kasur.
Also read: Rape, murder of 6-year-old Zainab shows state's indifference towards protecting citizens
The house is a simple two-storey structure opposite the local mosque, with three bedrooms and a living room on the ground floor. Zainab’s father, Muhammad Amin, a shopkeeper by profession, lives here with two younger brothers, their wives and children.
On that fateful January day, however, Amin and his wife Nusrat had been on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
Osman, a shy seven-year-old, says Zainab ran ahead of him. When he finally walked into the Quran lesson, she was not there.
“She ran ahead of me very fast.” Did she say something to you? Did you see where she was headed? I ask.
He shakes his head ‘no’.
Rukhsana, the aunt who mentored the children, says Zainab never showed up.
“When her family called me 40 minutes later to ask where she was, I assumed she had gone to one of our relatives’ homes in the neighbourhood,” she says.
Back at Zainab’s house, the family realised she was missing when they gathered for dinner.
“We left our food and started looking for her,” another aunt, Abida Shaheen, recalls.
“We assumed she may have gone to her phuppo’s house next door. She had been staying there a lot since her parents left for umrah.”
But Zainab was nowhere to be found. At 9.30pm, her youngest paternal uncle, Mohammad Adnan, finally rang up the police to file a missing person report.
Soon, there were policemen combing the neighbourhood for any sign of the little girl. The family even made an announcement through the mosque’s loudspeaker to ask the area’s residents for information.
At 4am, they informed Zainab’s parents in Makkah.
“There had been a similar incident a few days ago … [involving the] abduction and murder of a young girl on Perowala Road,” says Adnan.
The father of that child is a worker at a local bakery.
When he heard that Zainab was missing, he went over the CCTV footage from a camera installed outside his bakery. He found something of interest.
“He asked us if it was Zainab. The footage is black and white, but you could tell by the way she was walking it was her,” recalls Adnan.
She had been wearing leggings and an orange jersey over a black and white shirt. On Jan 9, five days after she had disappeared, labourers found her body, in the same clothes, from a trash pile.
Her relatives are still in shock.
Each family member says they never thought she could disappear from outside their house: that they know everyone in the neighbourhood, which is always full of people; that even if you come by at 2am, you will find people standing around and a shop or two open.
They cannot comprehend how Zainab could have gone missing from a bustling neighbourhood where their own children play.
As I sit with Zainab’s family the morning after they laid her to rest, her sister, Laiba, 16, shares her anguish.
“I am not crying because she is dead. My heart breaks to think that she was hurt. I cannot bear it,” she says.
We are in a room crowded by women from the neighbourhood. On one sofa in the centre, Zainab’s mother wails and calls out for her murdered child.
“When my mother was pregnant with Zainab, she had a very complicated delivery,” Laiba confides. “She underwent two operations, was on the ventilator, and was given 19 bags of blood. She was hospitalised for 16 days and didn’t see Zainab till she came home.”
The women in the room file in and out, stroking Nusrat’s shoulder and whispering prayers and words of comfort.
Laiba holds up a photograph of Zainab — the one that sparked a social media campaign for justice and widespread rioting in Kasur.
“I took the photograph last Sunday. She went missing on Thursday. People started asking for a photo when we were looking for her, so we had this developed on Friday.”
“It’s the only photograph I have of her,” Laiba says, her striking green eyes looking so much like Zainab’s in the photo.
Laiba turns to ask me: “How long will it take before you all forget about my sister?”
A woman tells the family not to grieve, that their daughter is shaheed; that Zainab’s death after so many similar cases will finally jolt the dormant state into action. But for her mother and sisters, it is too little too late.
Published in Dawn, January 12th, 2018
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So basically
1. Girl was staying at fathers joint family house where her paternal uncles / chachas etc lived.
2. She n her chachas son Usman daily used to visit Zainabs khalas house to learn quran. Her house is 5 minutes walk away.
3. Zainab and her cousin Usman when on their way to khalas house often used to race with each other to see who reaches the house first. That day Zainab took the lead and raced ahead of Usman.
4. Somewhere on her way ,the abducter, who perhaps had been prying on and scrutinizing zainab for days , caught her in her tracks and dont know how he lured her away.Or maybe the girl already knew him, he could be a close relative or her close relatives friend, who girl was already acquianted with that she comfortably went with him. That person possiblt was acting as an agent on that relatives behalf to abduct her.
5. When usman reached khalas house zainab was not there, her khala assumed she went back home.
6. Just few days before Zainabs murder, another little kid around maybe 5 years of age was abducted, raped and killed and perhaos her body was dumped on peerowala road. That case did not gain popularity as her father was a poor small time worker at the bakery. When the father of already murdered girl found out about it , he went to the bakery he worked at and checked cctv footages, and noticed a child walking away with a man. He gave that footage to her family who identified kid as zainab.
7. Police did not do anything , infact the footage of a man walking Zainab away was actually provided to police by Zainabs own family.
Even zainabs case would have died a quiet death if zainabs father did not have political contacts and influence.
also i am requoting this part from dawn report once again cause i find it really worth mentioning.
Each family member says they never thought she could disappear from outside their house: that they know everyone in the neighbourhood, which is always full of people; that even if you come by at 2am, you will find people standing around and a shop or two open.
I have a feeling the rapist basically eyes his targets , then he befriends them through candies etc . When they become comfortable with the predator he lured them showing some bait and then took them to a house or basement and raped and killed. Police is aware of him and instead of arresting him , it blew its sirens aloud to warn the predator so he can run away.
I would not be shocked if girls chachas are involved in it.
