KARACHI, May 17: The police on Thursday claimed to have arrested second suspect in connection with the murder of two women whose severed bodies were found at different places on different dates.

Addressing a press conference, SSP East Khadim Husain Rind said that a police party arrested Athar alias Papu near the Quaid-i-Azam’s mausoleum.

The police officer said that Athar was arrested on the information the police extracted from Rafique, who was arrested by the Soldier Bazaar police on April 24.

The SSP claimed that Rafique had confessed that he along with his two accomplices — Athar and Iqbal, who is absconder in the case — picked up the two women, whom he described as “sex workers”, on different occasions from a certain place and after having sex with them, the three men murdered these women and cut their bodies into pieces and disposed of them at different places.

The police officer said a convert Muslim woman and mother of five children, Nasreen, became the first target of the suspects.

The police recovered the woman’s body parts disposed of at different places near Solider Bazaar between March 10 and March 12, the police officer said.

The suspects on April 10 picked up another woman whose identity remained unclear, the police said.

They allegedly repeated the same brutality with her and disposed of her body parts in Cosmopolitan Colony within the remit of the Jamshed Quarter police station and near the Capri cinema within the remit of the Nabi Bux police station.

The victim could not be identified because of her disfigured face, the police said.

The police officer said the third suspect, Iqbal, was still at large and the police were trying to arrest him.

The suspect Athar who was a rickshaw driver hailed from Faisalabad.—Staff Reporter