Asma case: Police round up two suspects after receiving DNA report

PESHAWAR: The police took into custody two relatives of Asma, the four-year-old girl who was brutally murdered in Gujjar Garhi in Mardan district, after receiving the DNA report from the Punjab Forensic Science Agency, sources told The News on Tuesday.

However, senior police officers were tight-lipped when asked if they had taken two locals into custody for interrogation after their DNA samples matched. "Working on the report," responded Deputy Inspector General of Police, Mardan Range, Muhammad Alam Shinwari when asked to confirm if any prime accused had been rounded up. Another senior police official remarked they were “clarifying and confirming”.

Sources said that two relatives of Asma have been shifted to an undisclosed place for interrogation after their DNA matched with one or two of the three different samples taken from the crime scene.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah earlier told reporters that the samples sent to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency in Lahore matched the DNA of one of the locals about which the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police had been informed. The provincial minister said the report has been handed over to the KP Police.

The KP Police had sent the samples of around 145 persons to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency for DNA profiling as the local laboratory and the Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Peshawar didn’t have the required facility.

Asma went missing in the rural Gujjar Garhi in Mardan on January 13. Her body was later recovered from the nearby sugarcane field. The KP Police has insisted since day one that there was no evidence of sexual violence on the body of the victim. The police, however, could not arrest the killer even three weeks after the murder.

The authorities had to send the DNA of the local males to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency in Lahore to find the killer, who many believed was someone from the area. The incident was highlighted after Mardan District Nazim Himayatullah Mayar, who belongs to the Awami National Party (ANP), contradicted the statement of the police that she was not sexually tortured. He staged a rally to protest the failure of the police in arresting the culprits.

Later, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf workers and villagers of Gujjar Garhi led by the local Jirga also staged a protest rally against the district nazim, alleging that he was politicising the issue for political point-scoring.