GUJRAT: Hafizabad police have arrested two suspects allegedly involved in the murder of five years old boy Shehroz who was strangled after being raped.

Police resolved the blind murder mystery within 12 hours through evidence collected from the crime scene.

The boy went missing on March 16 in Ahmedabad locality in Hafizabad city’s outskirts and his body was recovered next morning on Saturday. Police traced and arrested the suspects before the burial of the deceased on Saturday night.

Hafizabad DPO Dr Sardar Ghias Gill told Dawn that police learnt about the recovery of boy’s body packed into a sack near Ahmedabad locality. He constituted an investigation team which cordoned off the area.

A regional team of the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) from Gujranwala collected forensic evidence and DNA from the body and found a long hair and almost a half piece of a sack from the body of the deceased since the body was packed into two bags, one was a little bit torn that helped police in tracing the suspects.

The DPO said police conducted a house to house search of the area and found a building locked. The area people called its owner Ahmed Ali, who supported long hair. The remaining piece of the torn sack was found from the same house.

Gill said the police team grilled Ali’s son Waseem alias Nomi, 17, who confessed to committing the crime with the help of friend Salman alias Shani.

Police took the two suspects and the house owner into custody for further investigation and got footage of close circuit cameras installed in the area.

The DPO said the main suspect had lured the boy to his house on Friday afternoon when his parents were away.

The suspect had dumped the body in a deserted pond close to his house after packing it into two bags.

The DPO said the DNA and polygraph tests of all three suspects would be conducted in Lahore.

He said the autopsy of the deceased at the DHQ hospital had confirmed raped before strangulation.

Police registered the case against the suspects under sections 302, 365 and 377 of Pakistan Penal Code on the report of Tariq, the father of the deceased boy.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2018