KOHAT: The police have collected samples of over 40 suspects for DNA following the sexual assault and murder of a four-year-old girl.

Talking to Dawn here on Friday, district police officer Sohail Khalid said the suspects included locals and some distant relatives of the victim, whose body was found in a drain on Thursday morning after she went missing from her house on Wednesday afternoon.

Mr Khalid said the police planned to conduct DNA of more than 200 people to reach the culprits as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the forensic report of the girl received on Friday confirmed she was sexually assaulted and that cause of her death was strangulation.

Dr Hashim, deputy medical superintendent of the KDA Teaching Hospital, said the lady doctor who had conducted the postmortem on Thursday had speculated that the victim might have been sexually assaulted. Therefore, her postmortem report had been sent to Peshawar for forensic examination.

The report, a copy of which is available with Dawn, stated that the minor girl had been brutally tortured during the assault as she had bruises on knees, back, nose, and other parts of her body. Signs of bites were also visible on the body.

The report said the victim was strangulated before being thrown into a drain as she had water in her lungs.

In a separate development, the Kohat Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Grand Alliance have urged the district administration to announce closure of markets on Fridays and Saturdays as have been done in Punjab and elsewhere in view of the spike in Covid-19 cases across the country.

In a statement, Haji Rasheed Paracha, former KCCI president and senior vice-president of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Business Forum, and Haji Abid Khan, president of Business Grand Alliance, pointed out that as most businesses already remained closed on Fridays so the business community would have to keep shops closed only on Saturdays.

They said lockdown on Fridays and Saturdays would facilitate the shopkeepers already hit hard by the frequent market closures.

They said most people did shopping on Sunday, being the weekend, which would also greatly help the consumers, especially during Ramazan.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2021