LARKANA: The Larkana antiterrorism court on Saturday sentenced one Sirajuddin aka Siraj Kalhoro to triple life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs250,000 on him after he was found guilty of abducting, sexually assaulting and killing a five-year-old girl in Naudero last year.

The ATC judge Ahmed Luqman Memon passed the verdict which further said that in case the convict failed to pay the fine he would have to undergo additional imprisonment of 16 months. The convict was later sent to central prison.

The girl’s decomposed body was found floating in a pond near railway station a day after she went missing while playing outside her home in Girghal Shah locality in Naudero on Nov 12, 2017.

The woman medical officer who had performed autopsy on the victim’s body had declared strangulation as her primary cause of death and later confirmed to police “she was 80 per cent sure the victim had been raped before death”, according to the then SHO of Naudero police station Sartaj Jagirani.

Kalhoro was picked up over suspicion and later confessed during interrogation to have committed the crime, said the SHO.

Police had subsequently booked Siraj Kalhoro in an FIR under Sections 302, 376 and 6/7 ATA lodged on the complaint of the father of the victim.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2018