Police arrest suspects in rape, murder of two sisters

Detained men confess to leaving five children of victims on rail track

TANDLIANWALA:

Police have arrested two brothers on charges of raping and murdering two sisters whose bodies were found in a drum floating in a canal in the Mamoun Kanjan area. Reportedly, the victims hailing from Faisalabad were visiting the town to meet their acquaintances Omar Farooq and Abu Bakar, who allegedly raped and later murdered them.

Police said the suspects had also killed the husband of one of the victims, Zafar Ali, in Vehari and dumped his body in a canal near Burewala. The police said the one of the deceased women was the mother of three children and the other of two. The suspect Farooq along with his brother Abu Bakar and accomplice Mukhtar strangled the sisters to death and hid their bodies in a plastic drum that they later threw it into the canal, investigators said.

The police said the elder sister, aged 28, had married Ali, a resident of Vehari, while the other, who was 26 years old, was married to one Arif in Okara. Police officials said that after killing the two sisters, the suspects had also left their five children on a railway track in a bid to kill them, but they were rescued by a railway employee manning a crossing. The suspects confessed to the police that out of fear of being caught, they wrapped the children in blankets, took them to Sahiwal in a vehicle and placed them on the railway track so that a train would crush them.

However, the railway worker saw them and picked them up. The children were handed over to the Child Protection Bureau. The bodies of the slain women were received by their mother Kulsoom Bibi from Allied Hospital in Faisalabad. A woman was allegedly sexually assaulted on pretext of getting her medicine from a medical store in Khurrianwala last month.

The complainant told the police that she went to the Allied Hospital to buy medicine with her 22-year-old daughter. She told police that Nabil Ahmed came to her and said he will bring her medicine from a medical store. She sent her young daughter with the suspect who took her to a secluded place and allegedly raped her.