BADIN: Two young suspects arrested on Monday after recovery of an eight-year-old girl’s body from their custody were booked for alleged rape and murder of five young girls case on Tuesday.

They were produced in a Tando Allahyar court, which remanded them into the custody of Chambarr police for two days.

The suspects, Shahid and Ghulam Hussain aka Sawan, belonging to a nomad family, were nabbed by the Tando Ghulam Ali while they along with the body were travelling in a Matli-bound bus.

They were quoted by police that they repeatedly raped the girl, their close relative, for four days after kidnapping her and later strangled her when her condition deteriorated.

They said they intended to bury the body somewhere in Matli.

In their request for a remand, the police said they wanted to interrogate the two suspects about all the five girls they confessed to have raped, killed and buried over the last two years. The FIR (22/2016) was lodged by the father of the suspects’ latest victim.

Meanwhile, Badin SSP Qayyum Pitafi, speaking to journalists on Tuesday, said that police were also looking into the possibility of the girl having been forced into begging by the suspects.

“The information we have collected suggested that the victim was neither kidnapped nor was she taken away by traffickers. She was, rather, voluntarily handed over to Ghulam Hussain, her cousin, by her father to join a team of young beggars who are related to each other. Her father

was getting Rs100 a day from the team’s earning,” the SSP said, adding that the affected father was not ready to lodge a kidnapping or rape case.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2016