Karachi police have apprehended a suspect who “confessed” to killing a three-year-old child after attempting to rape her, a police statement issued on Thursday said.

The child’s body was recovered from a street in Karachi’s Qabail Colony of Gulberg Block 11 on Wednesday morning, the police said.

Central Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Zeeshan Shafiq Siddiqi earlier told Dawn that the elder siblings of the child left their home to study at a seminary in the area when she followed them. Upon realising that the child was missing, her mother went out to find her but could not locate her.

SSP Siddiqi added that half an hour later, the minor’s body was found on the street in a slum area. The corpse was then taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities.

Gulberg Police subsequently started the investigation by registering a case under crime sections 302 (intentional murder) and 34 (common intent) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

According to the police statement today, the suspect, who was arrested within a few hours of the search operation, has confessed to committing the crime.

“The suspect said that child sat in his rickshaw while she was playing when he took her to his house and tried to sexually assault her, but when she screamed, he strangled her with a cloth and killed her,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, police surgeon Summaiya Syed told Dawn that a “post-mortem was conducted and all samples have been collected”, adding that the cause of death and suspicion regarding sexual violence had been kept reserved.

Children remain unsafe

In August, police arrested the main suspect involved in the gang rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Karachi’s Saddar area. The victim lived underneath the Lilly Bridge at Cantt Station along with her mother.

She was playing at the bus terminus when the suspects kidnapped her, the police said, adding that they took her to their office where they committed the heinous crime.

According to a report by Sahil, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working for children’s rights, a total of 1,630 cases of child abuse were reported across the country this year.

In the first six months of 2024, 862 cases of child sexual abuse, 668 cases of abduction, 82 cases of missing children and 18 cases of child marriages were reported. This year, 48 cases of pornography after sexual abuse were also recorded.

Six-monthly data shows that out of the total reported cases, (962) 59 per cent of victims were girls while (668) 41pc were boys.