‘Who would rape a 4-year-old?’

KARACHI: Maddened Gizri residents shut down Zamzama Boulevard in a protest Sunday morning after the body of a four-year-old girl, who was raped and strangled, was found from a ground in the neighbourhood by her cousins.

Nadia went missing on Saturday at 3 pm. According to her uncle Ghufran, she went out to buy some chips from a shop in the next alley.

“When she didn’t return after two hours, her mother started searching for her along with a relative,” said Ghufran. First, an elder sibling was dispatched but when she returned alone her mother set out herself. They combed each and every corner of the area and scoured every lane of the shopping area.

They were still searching for her by 6 pm when her father Khanan came home. The 35-year-old man is a stonecutter by profession but works for daily wages. He goes to work early in the morning and returns late in the evening. The couple had three children and Nadia was their second child.

“I told my wife to go back home and that I would look for the kid,” he said.

His first stop was the neighbourhood mosque where he requested the pesh imam to announce that his baby girl had gone missing. “Sorry, the mosque’s loud speakers are not for such announcements,” said the pesh imam to Khanan’s amazement. “If he had announced it, perhaps the people from the area could have helped, perhaps something would have happened,” he said later.

The search expanded to Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s mazaar, as Khanan thought that perhaps someone could have brought her there. In the end, his cousin said that they would have to go to the police. Khanan, accompanied by his two brothers and other relatives went to the Clifton police station to lodge an FIR for a kidnapping. The police complied, but the family said that they didn’t do anything other than the paperwork.

The dejected men went home. In the morning, one of Khanan’s nephews came running and shouting into the house: “Nado is dead! Nado is dead!”

Nadia’s cousins had discovered her body in the nearby Gizri ground. As soon as the body was brought home, her mother started screaming before falling into a faint. “She is still not in her senses,” said Nadia’s aunt Salma. “I cannot describe what the child’s body looked like. Her hands were tied to her back and she had been strangled...  Nadia would cry if someone even touched her. Only God knows what she went through last night.”

The news was quick to spread in the neighbourhood and angered residents blocked Zamzama’s streets and nearby roads. They shouted against the police and government for failing to act quicker. The police arrived to tackle the crowd and put out the burning tyres. The protest was called off only when the sniffer dog appeared.

The dog started running soon after it smelt Nadia’s blood-stained shirt. He entered the ground where the body had been dumped and did not move from the spot. The process was repeated several times but was the same each time.

“The girl was abducted and killed. We will soon find the criminals,” said SHO Clifton Yaseen Gujjar said. Other police officials suspect that Nadia was abducted and killed by someone from the area.

Her body was sent to Civil hospital and the post-mortem revealed that she had been raped, strangled and killed. CHK MLO Dr Roheena performed the postmortem. “She was first raped and then killed,” she confirmed to The Express Tribune. She estimated that the incident happened in the early hours of Sunday.

Nadia’s parents could not believe the results. “How can you rape a four-year-old girl?” demanded her father Khanan. “She was paak.”

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2010.