KARACHI, Nov 20: The body of a seven-year-old girl, who had gone missing on Thursday evening, was found along the Lyari Expressway within the remit of the Gulshan-i-Iqbal police station in the early hours of Saturday, police said.

An initial autopsy report suggested that she had been tortured and sexually assaulted before being murdered.

The area police said they found the body along the Lyari Expressway near the Lyari River after it was spotted by some passers-by.

They said the body was later moved to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for a post-mortem examination. It then became known that the girl had been reported missing from her house in Azeem Goth, located in Gulshan-i-Iqbal block 4-A, since Thursday evening.“The father of the girl was called to the hospital where he identified the victim as his daughter,” said Inspector Kanson Dean, the SHO of the Gulshan-i-Iqbal police station. “There were blood stains on the clothes and the body also bore severe torture marks. Her family says she disappeared while playing outside their home in the evening.”

He said that a missing report was lodged at the Mubina Town police station.

The police registered a case (FIR 867/2010) under Sections 302 (premeditated murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim's father, Muhammad Shahid.

However, no penal code section with regard to kidnapping and rape was incorporated in the FIR.

“We are waiting for the final medico-legal report,” said Sub-Inspector Sajjad Ali, the station investigation officer of the Gulshan-e-Iqbal police station. “The relevant sections [sexual assault] would be incorporated once we get that report as well as the details of a chemical examination from the authorities concerned.”

He said so far no one was detained or arrested in this case. He said that the police believed that the victim might have known those involved in the crime and they, therefore, killed her in order to conceal their identity. Dawn

A senior medico-legal officer (MLO) at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital told that an initial report that established that the girl was sexually assaulted had already been handed over to police investigators.

“We examined the body in the early hours of Saturday…she was killed about 24 hours before,” said MLO Dr Yasmin Qamar, who supervised the autopsy. “The girl was badly tortured as well as sexually assaulted before she was strangled. The nature of torture marks and the way she was assaulted suggest the involvement of an adult man [in the crime].”

The victim girl was studying in a government school in class two. She was third among five children of Muhammad Shahid.

“We reported the incident to the Mubina Town police station and kept requesting the police to help us out,” said a visibly shocked father in an almost inaudible voice while sobbing uncontrollably. “For more than 48 hours, no one from the police contacted us. We were approached only in the morning when a policeman asked us to reach the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital to recognise the body of a girl found in the area.”

A driver by profession, Mr Shahid was also unaware about the initial medico-legal findings and any progress in the investigations.