RAWALPINDI: The post-mortem report of a nine-year-old boy whose body was found in an abandoned well in the village of Jatli on April 17 revealed he died from drowning.

However, the police have said that they cannot declare the death of Mohsin Ali a murder and charge someone for it until they receive the chemical examiner’s report.

According to the autopsy report, Mohisn was wearing his school uniform and shoes when his body was recovered from the well, SP Ghais Gul told Dawn.

He said solving the case of the boy’s death and arresting those involved in the violence that followed afterwards for “exploiting the boy’s death” was a priority.

A student of the third grade, Mohsin Ali, went missing when he was on his way home from his final exam on March 21 and his body was found in a well on April 17, 21 days after he went missing.

After the boy’s body was recovered, a large number of villagers, led by the ruling party’s local union council chairman and a councillor staged a protest against the police which led to the registration of a case against 120 of the protesters with the charges including kidnapping, attacking the police and acts of terrorism.

The SP alleged that politicians were annoyed by the police’s operations against drug peddlers and that they had used Mohsin’s death to pressurise the police.

“The man who found the body has also been called in to be interrogated and we have also asked locals to help the police in finding whoever is responsible for Mohsin’s death,” Inspector Malik Naeem told Dawn.

The police have detained four villagers, all relatives of Mazhar Hussein, the deceased boy’s father, in connection with the death. They were pointed out by a fortune teller whom Mazhar had visited after his son’s body was found.

However, they have not been charged as yet because their involvement has not been established, though they were interviewed by senior police officials.

The father of the deceased boy is convinced that those detained by the police, after a fortune teller pointed them out, were involved in his son’s death.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2016