Corpse of teenage girl burnt with acid

Police say culprits cut victim’s stomach open

LODHRAN:

A teenage girl was killed and then her body was burnt with acid by unidentified culprits in the area of Qureshiwala Police Station.

Police also said that the culprits had cut the teenagers stomach open, pulled out its contents and threw them in the field before burning her body with acid.

According to the SHO of Qureshiwala Police Station, Amir Nadeem, police found the body of the 18-year-old girl lying in the fields of Hayatpur and shifted her to the District Headquarters Hospital for postmortem.

No ambulance was available for shifting the body to the hospital so it was taken to the District Headquarters Hospital in a motorcycle rickshaw instead.

According to police, the teenager had gone missing two days ago. The medico-legal officer, Dr. Niaz Kalachi, said the body appeared to have been burned with acid. Nevertheless, samples had been sent to the PFSA for a final report.

Police sources said they suspected that the teenager had been killed in the name of honor. However, they had been investigating the case from various angles.

According to sources, the teenager’s remains had been taken from Hayatpur to the District Headquarters Hospital in Lodhran, a distance of more than 15 kilometers, in a motorcycle rickshaw instead of an ambulance and again back to Hayatpur after the postmortem in the same vehicle.

Sources alleged that the personnel of the Qureshiwala Police Station had taken Rs1,390 from the heirs of the deceased on account of diesel charges.

However, when the SHO of the Qureshiwala Police Station was contacted, he denied the allegation of the police taking money from anyone on account of diesel charges.

Police said that though the girl had gone missing two days ago, yet they had not received any information from the heirs of the girl.

In February this year, Lahore police had managed to find clues to the case of a mysterious murder of a teenage body. It had taken the police eight months to solve the case.

Members of a family that had raised an orphaned child for four years had allegedly murdered him eight months ago [in 2021] to occupy his small house, the police had revealed. The parents of 13-year-old Bilal had died four years earlier, and he had been set to inherit a house measuring 1.5 marla.

His body was found dumped in an empty plot with a low boundary wall in June last year.

The deceased could not be identified at the time, though police had made announcements in the surrounding areas, seeking information about any missing person. Local people had noticed the body due to the stench emanating from it after decomposition in the hot weather.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2022.