Brother’s friend held for eight-year-old’s murder

Steel Town police on Friday claimed to have arrested the suspected killer of an eight-year-old boy whose body was found in Gulshan-e-Hadeed’s Phase-I two days ago.

“The accused, Tassawar Abbas, tried to sexually abuse the victim, Muhammad Subhan, and stabbed him to death when the child attempted to run away,” Steel Town Station Investigation Officer (SIO) Peer Muhammad Abbasi told The News while quoting the suspect’s confessional statement.

Abbas told interrogators that he was friends with the minor’s elder brother, Gasip Ali, who runs a transport business, the police officer said. “Subhan was stabbed in the back when he was trying to flee and the accused dumped his body in a hilly area of Gulshan-e-Hadeed’s Phase-I on the night between Monday and Tuesday.”

The police found the murder weapon and bloodstained clothes belonging to the suspect in his room, SSP Malir Rao Anwaar Ahmed told The News. An employee of the Pakistan Steel Mill’s PAD Department, Abbas was living in a bachelors’ hostel in the Steel Town area from where he was arrested, he added.

Police had found the body in Gulshan-e-Hadeed on Wednesday. Sub Inspector Manzoor Hussain Chandio told The News that the victim’s father, Rana Khalil Ahmed, had filed a report about his missing son on August 15.

In his statement, Ahmed said his son had gone to take part in an Independence Day rally in Gulshan-e-Hadeed on August 14, but he did not return home. Family members launched a search in the evening but failed to find the boy.

Chandio said some residents called in police on Wednesday when a scavenger told them about the presence of a corpse in a garbage dump at 4:30pm. A police team reached the spot and took the body to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a post-mortem examination.

A medico-legal officer had said in his report that the boy had been stabbed to death with a sharp-edged object and had not been subjected to sexual assault.