LAHORE: A 22-year-old girl was found shot dead in the washroom of a hotel on The Mall on Friday.

Police suspect the girl might have committed suicide by shooting herself in the head.

Police said Rabia Naseer, who resided at Batapur, left her home for college but instead reached a hotel on The Mall. The CCTV footage showed that the girl entered the lobby of the hotel attending a phone call and went to the washroom.

The security guards, who initially let her in without checking, heard a gunfire in the washroom and found it locked. The guards and other employees gathered outside the washroom and found the girl dead on breaking the door open.

The hotel administration alerted police who sent the body to the morgue for autopsy. Police also recovered a handgun and a purse which were lying beside the girl’s body.

Civil Lines Division SP Ali Raza said the girl was not staying at the hotel and went there by rickshaw and was not properly checked at the security points.

“We issued notices to the hotel administration after the incident and will investigate the lapse,” he added.

The SP quoted the girl’s family as saying that she was a fourth-year student at Kinnaird College. The institution denied the girl to be on its rolls.

“The girl was a student of Queen Mary College and would often visit Kinnaird to take part in different games such as cricket, hockey and basketball,” claimed its administration.

SSP Investigation Hasan Mushtaq Sukhera told Dawn that initial investigation led police to believe that the girl had committed suicide. He said they were waiting for the postmortem examination report and samples had been sent to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency to check whether the girl was shot from pointblank range or not.

The SSP said the case would be investigated from all angles and action would be taken against the hotel administration for inadequate security measures.

Hotel’s security in-charge Nadeem declined to comment on the issue saying “they are not allowed by the administration to speak to the media.”

Later, Racecourse police station registered a murder case against unidentified person on the complaint of victim’s father Ghulam Nabi.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2016