ISLAMABAD, Aug 12: Unmoved by a distraught mother’s pleas, the Golra police arrested a 12-year-old boy on Monday for killing his younger half-sister.

“I have already lost my lovely Nazia and I don’t want to lose my Irfan,” mother Razia Bibi implored Superintendent of Police Mohammad Jamil Hashmi in his Saddar Zone office where the mystery of the August 2 tragedy was unraveled.

That day, the poor, twice-married house cleaner had reported the strange death of her daughter to the Golra police.

She told the police that when she returned from her chores of the day to her shanty dwelling in a katchi abadi in Sector G-12, she found her three children playing outside. Nazia was inside and “appeared sleeping” on a bed.

But the six-year-old girl was lying so still that she got worried and had a closer look.

To her horror, the mother found that she was lifeless.

Police followed her back to the shanty and removed the body to a hospital for postmortem.

Doctors there noted that she had marks of strangulation on her neck and of a blow on her chin. The crime scene suggested to visiting police that the body was dragged to the bed after her killing.

Police investigators learned from neighbours that they had seen Irfan emerge from the dwelling around the estimated time of the girl’s killing.

They also described the suspect as “a rough boy” who, instead of attending school, worked at motorcycle workshops and whiled away his time.

Police asked the devastated mother to appear before the SP Saddar Zone with her son but she excused for she was taking the body of her daughter to her hometown for burial.

She however kept her promise of doing so on return and met SP Mohammad Jamil Hashmi and his team on Monday with her son in tow.

There the son made a clean breast of his crime, without emotions.

“I came home that day to pick some money from the home kitty to play snooker. But I found two 100-rupee notes torn into pieces,” he told the police officers.

His half sister Nazia blurted out that she had done it. Furious, the boy said he punched her in the face.

“She fell on the ground and I sat on her and strangulated her with a dopatta (scarf). She died on the spot,” police quoted him as saying.

After putting her body on the bed, he said he “left for the snooker club”.

His misty-eyed mother could just look on.

Her alibi for her first-born son smashed by himself, she had to admit to the police that on their way back to Islamabad from her hometown, the boy had narrated the same sordid details.

But the police say her son’s young age may save him from harsh punishment.

The 12-year-old can only be tried as a juvenile and, as maximum punishment, sent to a rehabilitation centre.

May be even he is set free. After all, the complainant - his mother - has pardoned his crime.