THATTA: A seven-year-old girl, who had gone missing at about 2.30pm on Thursday, was found strangled to death and dumped in a banana orchard near her house in Var town in the early hours of Friday.

Her parents told local reporters that they had been searching for their daughter and finally found her body lying in the field with tattered clothes.

Ghorabari police took the body into their custody and got a post-mortem examination performed at the Makli Civil Hospital, where doctors confirmed that she was subjected to criminal assault before being strangled to death.

The incident drew a sharp reaction from political parties, nationalist groups and civil society organisations as their activists took to the streets of Thatta and Makli to demand exemplary punishment to the culprit(s). People from all walks of life joined the protest.

Meanwhile, police picked up a suspect who was in the past arrested for kidnapping a young girl but got himself released through a jirga. The police said a hunt was on for two other suspects, one of them said to be a close relative of the victim.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2019