April 26, 2008	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 19, 1429

KARACHI, April 25: An accused in a case pertaining to the kidnap, rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl testified in an anti-terrorism court on Friday.

Judge Ghulam Ali Samtio of ATC-I, who is conducting the trial, adjourned the hearing till April 29 for final arguments.

The accused, Tanveer Ahmed, in his statement alleged that his step-sister and brother-in-law had implicated him in the case as according to him, they had borrowed money from him and when after some time he asked them to return the amount, they turned against him.

He said that his brother-in-law, Saleem, was also unhappy over his decision to get married. He also charged that the police had kept him in custody for four days before producing him in court for a remand.

He further said that the police had subjected him to torture during the interrogation and forced him to record a confessional statement before the judicial magistrate. The accused said that he had narrated his ordeal to the judicial magistrate.

According to the prosecution, Tanveer Ahmed had kidnapped niece Iqra, 8, on Feb 25, 2007 in the Pakistan Bazar police limits when she was playing in front of her house. The accused, brother-in-law of the girl’s father, took her to his home and demanded Rs500,000 as ransom from the victim’s father, Saleem.

Later, he allegedly raped the girl and after killing her chopped Iqra’s body into pieces. Police had traced the accused through the calls he had made on the complainant’s cellphone and arrested him. During the initial interrogation, the accused said he had buried different parts of the victim’s body in the Saddar and Mochko areas. The police had conducted raids on the specified locations and exhumed the parts.

Earlier, the medico-legal officer of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Dr Fareedi, who had conducted an autopsy on Iqra’s body, informed the court that medical reports had confirmed that the girl was sexually assaulted before being killed and marks of violence were also found on her body.