KARACHI: Police on Monday claimed to have arrested two more suspects for allegedly raping and killing a six-year-old girl in Orangi Town.

The girl had gone missing on Jan 25 and the body was found in an underground water tank in a wedding hall in Orangi Town’s Sector-8 on Sunday.

“Initially, we detained eight persons associated with the wedding hall,” said DIG-West Feroze Shah. “On information provided by the held suspects, we have arrested two more suspects in Hyderabad and Kandiaro. They are being brought to the city by the police.”

Additional police surgeon at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital Dr Rohina Hasan, who conducted the autopsy, told Dawn that the girl had been subjected to a sexual assault.

She said that it could not be ascertained immediately whether the body was thrown in the water tank or she was alive when someone threw her because it appeared that the body had lain in the tank for around six days.

The viscera were taken for a chemical and DNA analysis, she added.

On Jan 25, the girl along with her parents had gone to the wedding hall to attend a marriage ceremony from where she went missing. Her relatives launched a search for her but to no avail. Later, they approached the Orangi Town police station and lodged a ‘missing’ report, which was a day later converted into an FIR.

On Sunday, investigators conducted a thorough search of the wedding hall and a foul smell led them to the discovery of the body from the water tank. The incident caused widespread anger among the people of the vicinity who took to the streets and set the wedding hall on fire.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2016