20-year-old arrested over suspected rape, murder of 6-year-old boy in Karachi

KARACHI: A missing six-year old boy was found raped and murdered near Karachi’s Lea Market on Wednesday, with the police claiming to have arrested a 20-year old suspect who happened to be a neighbour of the victim.

Napier police said that the body of the boy was found at Punjab Gali near Spencer’s Eye Hospital, and moved to Karachi’s Civil Hospital for legal formalities.

Police surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed said that the body was “decomposed” and there were “multiple bone injuries”.

“All samples have been collected for sexual violence and chemical analysis,” she said, adding that the cause of death was “reserved”.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) South Syed Asad Raza told Dawn that although doctors had collected samples to ascertain sexual assault, the arrested suspect had confessed during the initial probe to kidnapping the boy for that purpose.

After allegedly killing the boy, the suspect kept the body on the rooftop of his house. It was later thrown from the third floor into an empty plot on Tuesday night, wrapped in a gunny bag, according to the DIG. Residents of the area noticed the incident and opened the bag, discovering the body.

The residents informed the police, who rushed to the area. In the meantime, some residents brought the suspect out from his residence and beat him before the police arrived to take him into custody.

According to the DIG, the suspect is a 20-year-old bachelor who works as a carpenter and originally hailed from Phool Nagar in Lahore. He was a neighbour of the victim, whose family also belonged to Punjab.

The victim was the only son of his parents, who also have four daughters.

The city police said in a statement that Napier police received information about the boy’s disappearance on July 6. The police continued searching for him but could not locate him, and a first information report (FIR) was later registered in the case.

Late on Tuesday night, police received information about the recovery of the boy’s body. According to the complainant and information provided by area residents, police arrested a suspect for allegedly throwing the body there, the police statement said.

According to the FIR, the father said he was a rickshaw driver by profession and lived in Muslimabad. He said that when he returned home on Monday at around 3pm, his daughter informed him that the boy had left to visit a shop at around 2:30pm but had not returned.

The father said he searched for his son in the neighbourhood and elsewhere and made announcements from local mosques, but the boy could not be traced.

On the father’s complaint, the Napier police registered the FIR under sections 3 (Trafficking in persons) of the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act of 2018 and 364-A (Kidnapping or abducting a person under the age of fourteen) of the Pakistan Penal Code, and launched an investigation.

Sindh’s Home Minister Ziaul Hasan Lanjar also took notice of the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of the boy and sought a detailed report from the DIG South, according to a statement issued by the ministry.

Last month, a three-year-old girl was found murdered at her doorstep in Quaidabad. Initial findings of a post-mortem examination confirmed that she had been subjected to “violent rape” before being murdered.

Described as “one of the most horrific cases” the police surgeon had seen in her career, the incident shocked the entire city, prompting the Sindh police chief to form a special team to investigate the case. ...