KARACHI: Police on Sunday claimed that the killing of a teenage girl in her Malir home during a robbery earlier last week was allegedly a premeditated murder orchestrated by the victim’s sister and committed by her fiancé.

A 16-year-old girl was stabbed to death and her elder sister, 18, suffered injuries by “unknown robbers” in their home in Malir’s C-Area within the remit of the Saudabad police station.

The elder sister had told police that her younger sister challenged the robbers by grabbing a kitchen knife, but one of them snatched the knife and stabbed her to death.

Without covering her face, a female suspect was paraded by police before cameras

However, police investigated the case with different angles and came to the conclusion that it was not a simple case of robbery as described by the survivor girl.

The investigators did not find the girl’s statement ‘satisfactory’ and they further grilled her. Later, they also associated her fiancé, Mazhar, in the investigation. During interrogation, both the girl and Mazhar “confessed” to their involvement in the murder.

On Saturday, Korangi SSP Noman Siddiqui claimed to have resolved the case at a press conference, where the young girl was paraded before the media in an unusual manner though the police covered the faces of almost every suspect before his identification parade.

The manner with which she was asked to share her alleged confession with minute details also raised many eyebrows.

The Korangi SSP said that the deceased had a close friendship with Ahsan, who forced her elder sister to become friend with his brother Abbas.

He said that the two brothers had got intimate pictures of the two sisters and they “started blackmailing them”. They also came to their home in the absence of their parents, he added.

The SSP said the deceased girl actually helped the two brothers in blackmailing her own sister.

The elder sister brought this matter to her fiancé and told him that her sister was destroying her life by doing all this and not deleting the pictures.

He said the couple made a plan and committed the murder, and painted the incident as a robbery gone wrong by looting mobile phones, cash and other valuables from the house.

The SSP claimed to have recovered six stolen mobile phones, Rs76,000 and the murder weapon from the house of suspect Mazhar.

Earlier, a case was registered against “unknown robbers” under Sections 397 (robbery) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

However, Saudabad SHO Shahrukh told Dawn that a total of four suspects were in custody. The two brothers, Ahsan and Abbas, were also arrested and they would soon be booked in the murder and robbery case, he added.

At the press conference, the elder sister suspected of the murder told reporters that her sister was mentally torturing her as she threatened her to upload her pictures on the internet. She said she tried to persuade her to get her pictures deleted, but instead she with her friend assaulted her.

She said suspect Ahsan had threatened her that he would make public her pictures when she tied the knot.

“Ahsan should be given exemplary punishment as he compelled me to kill my sister,” she said.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2017