PESHAWAR, July 10: Police have failed to arrest the prime suspects in the case of murder of a ten-year-old girl, who was killed on May 31 in Fatho Abdurahimia, in the suburbs of the provincial capital.

Haleema was strangulated and her body was thrown in an orchard.

The villagers still remember that the entire village was in grief as the girl was liked by everyone.

The families of the girl and of the alleged killers have left the area.

The residents told a fact-finding team of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan three days ago that the girl had gone to a neighbour’s home to fetch water, but did not return. When her grandmother started a search for her the inmates of that house expressed ignorance. After some time the villagers found her body in an orchard situated between the residences of the girl and the alleged killers.

The prime suspects, Sawab Gul and his brother-in-law Mohammad Ayub, in whose home the child was allegedly killed, were absconding. The police had arrested four persons: Shakeel and Aurangzeb, nephews of Ayub; Shamim, wife of Ayub, and her daughter Mubeena.

However, they were released on bail by the court of an additional district and sessions judge on different grounds as Ms Shamim was having a suckling baby whereas Mubeena was a juvenile.

An organization, Wagma (Women Awareness in the Globalisation of Modern Age), announced on Sunday that it would contest the case on behalf of the girl’s family and file bail-cancellation applications in the Peshawar High Court.

The chief executive of Wagma, Younas Durrani, told Dawn that their legal team had collected record of the case and would soon file the applications.

The accused, Shakeel, had told the police that the girl was killed by Sawab Gul, brother of Ms Shamim. However, he did not record the same statement before the court of a judicial magistrate.

The motive behind the murder is still a mystery. The inhabitants of the area believed that the girl had witnessed some of the accused persons in objectionable condition which might have led to her murder.

The grandmother of the girl, Gulfaroza, stated that Haleema took a water-cooler for bringing water from the residence of Mohammad Ayub. “Haleema returned after some time and again left to fetch some more water after which she never returned,” she stated.

Ms Gulfaroza stated that she went to Ayub’s residence and saw the cooler lying there but they expressed ignorance about the girl. She said that she informed other villagers and a joint search was started. Soon some villagers saw the body in a nearby orchard.

Two villagers, Zahoor and Yousaf, told the HRCP team that the villagers were searching for the girl in different fields and places including the said orchard, but at that time the body could not be recovered. “Only after ten minutes the body was lying in the same orchard, which strengthened the suspicion that the girl was killed in Ayub’s home as it was adjacent to the orchard,” Mr Zahoor said.

He said that Sawab Gul, the brother-in-law of Ayub, used to visit their residence and was not enjoying good reputation.

Women in neighbouring homes were tight-lipped about the incidence and told the team that they had no interaction with the killers’ family. Women in some of the residences, situated about 300 yards from the place of occurrence, told the team that most of the villagers were sure that the girl was killed in Ayub’s home.

An official of the Chamkani police station, Zakirullah, said that they were handicapped as the case was of ‘no-witness’. He stated that initially in the FIR the complainant, Inamullah Khan, maternal uncle of the girl, had not charged anyone. Later, he stated Ayub’s family was charged by them for the commission of the offence.

“One of the accused, Shakeel, had confessed during custody that Sawab Gul had killed the girl, but he retracted that statement before the magistrate,” Mr Zakirullah said, adding that the accused family had left their residence and their present abode was not known.

The official said that the post-mortem did not suggest that the killers had tried to sexually abuse the girl. He stated that they suspected that the deceased had witnessed some immoral act after which she was killed.