KARACHI, Aug 26: Seven-year-old Rahima Bibi, who was kidnapped in Bilawal Shah Noorani goth on Aug 4, was found brutally murdered on Saturday night. The body, chopped into at least seven pieces, was stuffed into two gunny bags. But for her hair and clothes, she would not have been recognized. Even her eyes were gorged.

For the hapless parents, the shock was beyond description. But after a long, agonizing search, they were so desperate that they wished they could see the child even if dead. They had never imagined that they would see her as they did.

It was around 3pm on that fateful day when the child, clutching her Qaida, left her home for the nearby mosque-school. Evidence suggests that a woman grabbed her, putting her hand on the mouth of the small girl and making her unconscious, and walked away with the child wrapped under her flowing garb. Apparently there was no adult in the narrow lane of the shanty town, situated next to the Suparco premises, to take notice of the daylight crime.

Sakhi Jan, the father of the child, who is a cement block-maker, searched for the child everywhere. He was helped by his tribe people, hailing from the tribal belt in the NWFP. The mainly uneducated people used every method they could think of, including a protest demonstration against police, to find the whereabouts of the child.

In the FIR, registered at Sachal police station, they named a woman suspecting her to be behind the disappearance of Rahima. Police later confirmed that they had busted a gang, of which the woman was one of the members, involved in kidnapping children. The woman, who earlier too had been booked for similar crimes at the same police station, was remanded in police custody. She, however, reportedly slipped away from the police station, but was arrested in Rahimyar Khan and brought back to Karachi. Police first said that she had confessed to the crime, but later she denied her involvement in the kidnapping.

Cases of a similar nature are often reported in the print media. The stone- hearted criminals, somehow, get away with it. The city has seen many instances of extreme brutality. Rahima Bibi’s case is one of the few such worst examples.

—Naseer Ahmad