Minor girl who disappeared in Quaidabad on Wednesday found raped and murdered

A seven-year-old girl was found raped and murdered on Friday two days after her kidnapping from the Quaidabad area of Karachi.

The girl’s family claimed that as she went missing, police did not register a case and instead of making efforts to trace and recover her, they kept delaying the registration of an FIR for two days. The family themselves found her body bearing torture marks at a garbage dump near an under-construction building in Landhi’s Muslimabad Colony.

The victim was a resident of the Quaidabad area. She went missing on Wednesday when she left her brother’s house for playing. Two days later, her body was found by her family members within the limits of the Quaidabad police station.

The family took the body to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre where a preliminary post-mortem report suggested that the girl had been raped before she was strangled to death and marks of torture were also found on her body. The body was later handed over to the family for burial.

The victim was the third among six sisters. Her father is a fruit vendor. Following the discovery of her body, her family members and relatives staged a protest and demanded that the government take measures to protect girls so that the same did not happen to someone else's daughter.

The family said that the victim went missing from outside her brother's house that is located near her home. According to the father, she went outside the house without wearing slippers, which suggested that she was playing just outside when she was abducted.

“For two days, instead of registering an FIR, the police kept avoiding it,” the ill-fated father said. “When she was not found till Wednesday night, it was believed that she had been abducted.”

The father bemoaned the police attitude, stating that they just fulfilled formalities by asking his mobile phone number and missing daughter’s name and then asked him to leave the police station saying that if they found the girl, they would inform him.

He said that he again went to the police station on Thursday night and asked the police to register a kidnapping case but the relevant official for registering a case was unavailable. On Friday morning, he again went to the police station but the police continued to resort to delaying tactics.

The father maintained that his brother called him on Friday to inform him that his daughter’s body had been found. “I lost my princess, but the police did not try to recover her alive or dead as the family itself found her body.”

Following the incident, District Malir SSP Irfan Bahadur and investigation SSP visited the area to investigate the case. A forensic team collected evidence from the crime scene. Police officials said geo-fencing was also being conducted in the area, police officials said, added that footage of CCTV cameras was also being obtained around the crime scene.

The police started investigations but interrogating neighbouring persons and some suspects. The investigators said the suspects would be detained in order to collect their DNA samples. The police also recorded the statements of the girl’s relatives. SSP Bahadur instructed the investigators to provide all possible help to the family members and not to be careless in the investigation. He assured the family that those who had kidnapped, raped and murdered the girl would be brought to justice soon.

Body found

Separately, the body of a man was found on a vacant plot near Bhains Colony within the Sukkan police station’s remits. Upon receiving the information, police and rescuers reached the scene and transported the casualty to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre where the man was identified as 35-year-old Shahzad Khan, son of Shahroz Khan. Police said the victim had been shot and killed by unidentified suspects.