A six-year-old girl who went missing in Karachi's Korangi area was found murdered after being subjected to rape, officials said on Wednesday.

The child's body was found from a garbage dump in Korangi’s Zaman Town near her residence after a search of nearly eight hours. Police carried out raids in different localities and detained around one dozen suspects for questioning.

Landhi SP Shahnawaz Chachar said the minor girl had gone missing from her house in Ghous Pak area of Korangi at around 9pm on Tuesday.

The parents reported the incident to police at midnight, while her body was found from a garbage heap at around 5am on Wednesday with her neck broken.

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The body was shifted to the Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Centre to fulfil legal formalities.

“Her autopsy showed that she had been raped, sodomised and then murdered,” said additional police surgeon at the JPMC Dr Summaiya Syed.

There were “multiple injuries to the head and body and private parts”, Dr Syed added.

“Swabs have been collected for semen serology and DNA profiling and cross-matching.”

The doctor further said the girl's clothes had been sealed and her visceral samples had also been collected.

SP Chachar said police conducted raids in various localities and detained 10-12 people for interrogation. He said these persons had been detained because they were known as "bad characters" in the area.

Police also searched "shady places" like grounds and closed schools to find possible clues. Additionally, police forensic teams visited the crime scene and collected evidence. Geofencing of the area was also being carried out to find clues about the suspects, the senior officer said.

SP Chachar said while there was no CCTV footage, investigators had indications that the suspects who threw the child's body in the garbage were traveling in a rickshaw.

The victim's grief-stricken father told the media that his daughter was playing outside their home along with other children as there was a power outage in the locality. The father accused the police of lack of cooperation, saying when he visited the relevant police station on Tuesday night for lodging a case, officials did not take his complaint seriously.

'8 children abused daily'

As many as 2,960 major crimes against children were reported in the four provinces, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) in 2020.

According to data released by the NGO Sahil, eight children were abused every day in Pakistan in one form or the other, while 51 per cent of the victims were girls and 49pc boys.

Out of the reported cases, 985 were of sodomy, 787 rape, 89 pornography and child sexual abuse and 80 were of murder after sexual abuse. Cases of abduction, missing children and child marriages were 834, 345 and 119, respectively.