KARACHI: A minor girl was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed before being dumped in a deserted area of Karachi's Sachal Goth on Friday, according to police and hospital officials.

Officials said that the body of the seven-year-old girl was recovered from bushes near Abdullah Shah Ghazi Goth in the outskirts of Karachi.

The body was shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for a postmortem.

“She was strangulated to death,” said additional police surgeon of the hospital, Dr Rohina Hasan.

“She was raped and subjected to sodomy also before being murdered,” the health official told Dawn.

He further said that the body bore marks of torture and added that the crime had taken place 10 to 12 hours before it was brought to the hospital around noon.

Sohrab Goth DSP Mohammad Khalid Khan said that the girl had gone missing from her residence in Abdullah Shah Ghazi Goth on Thursday.

The family had lodged her missing report at Sachal police station at around 9:30pm on Thursday and her body was found on Friday morning from a ditch surrounded by bushes near Al Azhar Garden residential complex.

The officer said that the police have started conducting raids and are hoping that the culprit(s) would be arrested soon.

Earlier in Feb, a one-and-a-half-year-old girl was raped before being strangled to death in Karachi.

Take a look: Toddler raped, strangled in Karachi

Last year in November, a six-year-old girl was strangled and dumped near a garbage heap in Quetta after being subjected to rape attempts.

Know more: Six-year-old Hazara girl murdered in Quetta after attempted rape

Rape is notoriously difficult to prosecute in Pakistan, where women are often treated as second-class citizens.

In April 2011, the Supreme Court had upheld the acquittal of five men sentenced to death in Pakistan's most famous rape case, that of Mukhtar Mai.

Mai was gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council as punishment, after her brother, who was aged just 12 at the time, was accused of having illicit relations with a woman from a rival clan.

A local court had sentenced six men to death, but a higher court acquitted five of them in March 2005, and commuted the sentence for the main accused, Abdul Khaliq, to life imprisonment.

Opinion

Budgeting without people

Budgeting without people

Even though the economy is a critical issue, discussions about it involve a select few who are not really interested in communicating with the people.

Editorial

Iranian tragedy
Updated 21 May, 2024

Iranian tragedy

Due to Iran’s regional and geopolitical influence, the world will be watching the power transition carefully.
Circular debt woes
21 May, 2024

Circular debt woes

THE alleged corruption and ineptitude of the country’s power bureaucracy is proving very costly. New official data...
Reproductive health
21 May, 2024

Reproductive health

IT is naïve to imagine that reproductive healthcare counts in Pakistan, where women from low-income groups and ...
Wheat price crash
Updated 20 May, 2024

Wheat price crash

What the government has done to Punjab’s smallholder wheat growers by staying out of the market amid crashing prices is deplorable.
Afghan corruption
20 May, 2024

Afghan corruption

AMONGST the reasons that the Afghan Taliban marched into Kabul in August 2021 without any resistance to speak of ...
Volleyball triumph
20 May, 2024

Volleyball triumph

IN the last week, while Pakistan’s cricket team savoured a come-from-behind T20 series victory against Ireland,...