K-P police concerned after forensic report ‘leaked’

Say they have yet to receive report, PFSA chief says rape confirmed

PESHAWAR: The K-P police have expressed concerns after details of a forensic report of samples collected from a young girl — who had been raped and murdered — were leaked to the press before being officially communicated to Peshawar.

A four-year-old girl had been raped, strangled and then dumped in a sugarcane field in Mardan on January 14, a day after she had gone missing from her home. While an autopsy was conducted on the body, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) police sent samples obtained from the body to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) in Lahore for gaining greater insights into what may have transpired and who her assailant may be.

The PFSA, though, shared the forensic report with the media on Friday, stating that the girl had been raped (confirming findings of the autopsy report).

PFSA Director General Dr Ashraf Tahir told the media in Lahore that they were trying to match DNA samples from the girl with those of potential suspects. He added that they had dispatched a copy of the report to K-P police.

“Semen has been confirmed and is being profiled. We are waiting for the [samples of] suspects to be brought,” Tahir told The Express Tribune, adding that semen was found in a used condom sent as evidence. “We have verbally informed the K-P police,” Tahir followed.

Officials of the K-P police, who were expecting the report to be delivered to Peshawar next week, were shocked when they started getting calls about it from inquisitive reporters on Friday morning and wondered why would someone share details of a high-profile murder case with media and that too before sharing it with the concerned department.

“Under what capacity did they leak the information of a high-profile criminal case without sending the report to the K-P police [first],” a senior official of the police department asked angrily.

“We have yet to receive the forensic report into the girl’s murder but there is a possibility that the report will be delivered next week,” read a K-P police statement which quoted Mehsood on Friday.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2018.