Murder shall out: Girl child’s body found in neighbour’s yard

Seven-year-old had gone missing three years ago.

FAISALABAD:

Remains of a seven-year-old girl, kidnapped three years ago, were recovered from a neighbour’s house on Monday during digging by the new occupant. The clothes on the skeleton were those the child had been wearing when she had gone missing.

Police have arrested the previous occupant who had been nominated in the kidnap FIR as a suspect by the girl’s father three year ago.

Ameer Nasir Javed, a police spokesman, said that the girl, a resident of Chak 59-JB, had gone missing while playing in front of her house.



He said the child’s father, Anwarul Haq, had registered a case against Falak Sher and Akram with the Sandal Bar police. The suspects were arrested but later released due to lack of evidence.

The police spokesman said that after the registration of the case, the suspects had left the neighbourhood and shifted elsewhere with their families. The house was later acquired by Muhammad Yousuf.

On Monday, police said, while Yousuf was helping some labourers dig the ground for construction of a room, his shovel hit something hard.

He said he started digging further and discovered a child’s skeleton wearing clothes. The police were informed and took the skeleton into custody. It was later identified as the kidnapped child. They said her parents recognised the clothes.

District medico-legal officer Raja Muhammad Khurram said that examination of the bones would allow determination of the cause of the child’s death and her age.



Talking to The Express Tribune, Haq said that he had had an argument with the suspects over a children’s quarrel two months before she went missing. He said the matter was resolved, but they (suspects) held a grudge against him.

He said when the child went missing, he had looked for the child everywhere, including at the suspects’ house. He said they had told him that they had seen his daughter go with a man.

He said the police had arrested the suspects, but had later let them go because “there was no evidence against them”.

He said he had been visiting the police station every week since then, but the police had seemed to have lost interest in the case. He said he had not heard anything suspicious from the neighbouring house all the time that the child was missing.

Yousuf, the current resident of the house, said that a lot of people had gathered in front of his house once the word spread, but he did not let anyone enter.

Sher told police he had no idea whose skeleton it was or how it came to be there. He said he could not think of such a crime.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2013.