DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The parents of a nine-year-old girl, who was killed after being assaulted, have blamed a retired police official for influencing investigations into the case.

They have also criticised the local police for their failure to solve the case and arrest the people involved in the gory incident. They said that police were doing nothing to bring the killers to book. Police didn’t get physical remand of the suspects, they added.

The victim, a student of grade IV at a primary school in Zafarabad went missing on May 17. Next day, her body was found few kilometres away from the locality in the fields. She was allegedly raped and strangulated by unidentified persons.

The parents of the victim alleged that a retired police official, who was running a general store near the street, was harassing the poor family besides influencing the case by visiting the arrested people at Dera Township police station.

The father of the girl, a low paid worker at local furniture manufacturing workshop, told this scribe that immediately after the incident Commissioner Mushtaq Ahmad Jadoon, district police officer, former deputy speaker of National Assembly Faisl Kareem Kundi and other senior officials of civil administration visited his home and expressed their sympathies with him. He said that they assured him of assistance in the case but the killers of his daughter were still at large.

He said that some suspects were arrested by Dera Township police but they were set free and the investigations remained inconclusive. He said that no organisation working for the rights of children and women and human rights bothered to visit him to provide him with any assistance.

The officials of Dera Township police station, when contacted, said that few people were arrested for interrogation but they didn’t get their physical remand. Police are also tightlipped about the medico-legal report of the victim girl.

The parents of the girl appealed to the chief justice of Peshawar High Court to take notice of the incident and slow progress by police in the case so that the killers could be brought to justice.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2014