A woman was arrested in the Kata Kot area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Haripur district on Monday for allegedly beating her stepson to death, police said.

In the first information report (FIR), seen by Dawn.com and registered at the Kot Najibullah Police Station, the seven-year-old victim’s father stated he was at work in Taxila when his wife called him after 3pm, informing him that his son “had been struck in the head by some people in the street.”

“When I reached home, I found my son in a bed with his body bearing marks of brutal torture, and he was dead,” the victim’s father stated in the FIR.

He added in the report that when he grilled his wife, she said the boy was making a noise inside the house, so she beat him with a stick.

The complainant further requested the police to take legal action against his wife as she had allegedly tortured his child to death, the FIR said.

According to Haripur District Police Officer Farhan Khan, the suspect was arrested within an hour of the FIR being registered. He added that an investigation was ongoing and pledged to ensure justice for the victim.

A civil society report published in May, based on data collected from 81 national and regional newspapers across the country, reported up to 3,364 child abuse cases from all four provinces, Islamabad Capital Territory, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan in the year 2024.

On Saturday, KP police arrested a suspect after a 13-year-old maid was allegedly raped and murdered in Abbottabad.

Last month, a teenage mother was allegedly killed by her husband and father in Gulshan-i-Maymar in the name of ‘honour’.