Rape case: 5-year-old’s body found with torture scars

Karachi police suspect girl was strangled.

KARACHI: A five-year-old girl *S, who had gone missing from her grandmother’s house in Karachi’s Bheempura locality on Friday, was found from the same area on Sunday. She had been reportedly raped and tortured. At Civil Hospital’s morgue, where the little girl was brought for a post mortem examination, her father Rashid said, “I can’t believe what happened. We have no enemies.”

Over the last two days, Rashid had been putting up posters in his neighbourhood requesting information regarding his daughter’s whereabouts; he checked hospitals and sent her photograph to media outlets in a bid to recover her. Rashid, who sells mobile phone cards for a living, says S went missing on Friday evening.

On Sunday afternoon, locals found the body of a girl, clad in a red kameez and black shalwar, near the office of a political party in the area.

Despite the marks on her body, the family recognized S and brought her to the hospital; after examination, her body, wrapped in a blood-soaked shroud, was sent to her home in Surjani Town. A police official was en route to Napier police station to register an FIR against unidentified men as this report was filed.

“The medico legal officer has confirmed the rape. The girl was severely tortured. There are bruises on her head, face and other body parts. Her head was injured by a heavy object,” said additional SHO of Napier police station Tanweer Mughal.

Police said S’s body was found 24 to 36 hours after her death. According to the initial investigation, the cause of death is being declared ‘strangulation’.

*Names have been changed to protect identities

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2014.