A seven-year-old boy was murdered after being allegedly raped inside a coaching centre in Gulshan-i-Iqbal area of Karachi, police said on Thursday.

The body of the boy was found from the building of a coaching centre near National Stadium, New Town police officials said.

The corpse was shifted to Civil Hospital Karachi for post-mortem examination. “The boy was strangulated to death before being subjected to sodomy,” said police surgeon Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbas.

A New Town police officer said the victim’s father Abdul Sattar Shah is a watchman at the same coaching centre and resides in the servant quarter of the centre.

The father informed the police that the boy had been missing since 12:30 in the noon.

Police are currently investigating the matter, after which a case will be registered.

Since the beginning of 2018, there has been a marked upsurge in the reporting of sexual abuse cases across Pakistan. The brutal rape and murder of Zainab Ansari in Kasur earlier this month, in particular, shocked the entire country, with #JusticeforZainab becoming the rallying cry in a nationwide drive to end violence against children.

A 15-year-old boy was kept in illegal confinement and sexually assaulted over the course of four days by four men in Rawalpindi's Razzaq Town in January. Similarly, two men reportedly belonging to an influential family allegedly sexually assaulted a teenage boy after intoxicating him in Punjab's Sargodha district during the same month.

Moreover, in the first week of the last month, an eight-year-old boy was allegedly sexually assaulted and strangled in Sherakot. The minor was found dead in an under-construction quarter, half a kilometre from his Yusuf Nagar house. A local had spotted his body which was covered with a piece of cloth.