Three detained in minor girl’s murder case

The Jamshoro district police have detained three suspects in connection with the murder of an eight-year-old Aasia Mughal whose dead body was found in the ruins of an old house in Mahmood Shah Colony area of Kotri.

Besides rounding up the suspects for interrogation, SSP Muhammad Tahir Nawaz formed a five-member committee under DSP Abdul Raheem Khaskheli to probe into the case.

The child, enrolled in class four in a local seminary, had gone missing on Sunday night. Her dead body was found in an abandoned house filled with debris and solid waste over 14 hours later on Monday morning.

Father of the deceased girl, Liaquat Ali Mughal Hazarewal, told police that Aasia had left home after Iftar on Sunday night to buy confectionery from a shop in the street but did not come back home.

“The family began to search and lodged an initial complaint about the missing child at SITE police station”, he added.

The family and neighbours also blamed the police for not cooperating with them in the search until the body was found.

The dead body was shifted to District Headquarters Hospital in Kotri where it was kept for around three hours until it could be referred to Liaquat University Hospital for the autopsy.

The grieving family complained that the medico-legal section of Kotri hospital handed over to them a prescription to buy certain materials from the private market for the postmortem. The initial postmortem has not reveal rape but disclosed that Aasia was strangled to death, according to a LUH health official.

Meanwhile, SSP Jamshoro visited the bereaved family and assured them that he will take the case as if Aasia was his own daughter. He assured them that besides being a police officer he is also father of children and that he could feel their pain.

The incident's FIR has been lodged at Kotri police station on the father's complaint, in which he has nominated unknown suspects under section 302 and 34 of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

Mughal works as a cobbler in Bihar colony. He claimed that he has no known enemies whom he can blame for his daughter's death. The neighbours who spoke to the media outside the family's home during their condolence visits believed that some drug addicts are likely to be involved in the child’s killing.

They alleged that due to police connivance the substance abuse has become rampant in their localities.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 10^th, 2024.