GUJRAT: Police claimed on Sunday to have recovered the body of a girl who had been killed by her ‘lover’ with whom she had eloped and then contracted marriage back in August.

After her father had lodged a kidnap case, police launched search for the girl and found her body on the basis of information they obtained from two suspects. They confessed to killing the girl.

A police official confirmed to Dawn that the charred body of Tayyaba, 16-year-old daughter of Shaukat Hayat of Jalalpur Jattan city’s Hajipura locality, had been found in a pond of Bhagowal village. She had been killed by Sajjad Ahmed.

The father of the deceased girl in a fresh application to the police alleged that his daughter had been killed after being raped by five people.

The police said the matter of gang rape would be ascertained in the autopsy report as the body was sent to the Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Hospital for autopsy and further investigation was under way.

Police had already taken Sajjad Ahmed into custody but declined to show his arrest till the recovery of the body.

Later, police arrested three other people including Sajjad’s mother, who is alleged to have burnt the girl’s body after she was shot dead.

The case, which was earlier lodged with the Jalalpur Jattan Saddar police under section 365 B, will now be changed into a murder case and gang rape sections could only be inserted after the autopsy report.

STRIKE: Doctors and paramedics of the district observed a black day on Sunday and started a two-day strike in all the health facilities against the targeted killing of a senior doctor in Mandi Bahauddin, warning of shutting down emergencies of all public and private hospitals if the killers were not arrested within 24 hours.

Dr Shahid Nazeer, a senior medical practitioner, was killed by two unidentified armed men at his private hospital along Rasul Road, Mandi Bahauddin, on Saturday.

Mandi Civil Lines police registered a case against unidentified suspects but the doctors’ community considered it a targeted killing.

There was a complete strike in outpatient departments (OPDs), indoor and operation theatres of all the public and private hospitals of Mandi Bahauddin district;

however, emergencies of district headquarters and tehsil headquarters hospitals remained functional.

The local chapter of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), in an emergency meeting, has warned of closing down emergencies of the DHQ and THQ hospitals also if police don’t arrest the killers until Monday evening.

The PMA has also given a call to doctors and paramedics to gather at the Mandi DHQ hospital on Monday morning to hold a demonstration.

Meanwhile, the body of Dr Nazeer was handed over to his family after autopsy at the DHQ hospital and he was laid to rest in a graveyard of Badshahpur.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2016