MULTAN: A six-year-old girl, who had gone missing last Sunday, was found dead in a pond near a graveyard in Dunyapur, Lodhran district, on Friday.

Her funeral was held at the Faizan-i-Medina Janazagah on Saturday.

The child, a resident of Ward 2 in Dunyapur, went missing from her house on Feb 18, and her father Muhammad Jamil informed police that she had gone missing the next day. The police looked for her in various places but couldn’t find her.

On Friday, residents of a colony near the Wasti Noorpur graveyard saw a body in a pond and called the police.

They took the body to the Lodhran DHQ Hospital for a post-mortem examination and sent tissue samples to the forensic laboratory for testing.

Dunyapur DSP Abdul Majid Virk told reporters that police had taken some suspects into custody and gathered identity cards and mobile phone numbers of some people in the area.

He said police had launched a search operation earlier but had been unable to find the girl.

The medical staff at the hospital said the girl had died 48 hours before the post-mortem examination was conducted.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2018