An eight-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted before being brutally murdered by her cousin in Nawabshah on Sunday, police said.

According to police, the fourth grader was alone at her home in Jamshed Colony area of Old Nawabshah at the time of the incident.

After sexually assaulting the young girl, the suspect strangulated her and cut her throat with a knife, police said.

The suspect then covered her body in a sheet and threw it in a livestock area near the house before fleeing the crime scene.

The young girl's parents told journalists that they had gone to a relative's house to offer condolences for someone's death. Upon returning home they were unable to find their daughter after which they rushed to inform the police who found her body in the nearby livestock farm.

The victim's parents said that they had been informed by their neighbours that their nephew (the father's sister's son) had come to the house in their absence.

The devastated couple demanded that the culprit be brought to justice for the brutal rape and murder of their young and innocent daughter.

Later, Incharge CIA police Mubin Parhyar told journalists that the police carried out several raids before finally nabbing the accused whom they found dressed in blood-covered clothes.

Upon being questioned, the accused confessed to sexually assaulting and murdering his cousin.

The young girl's body was shifted to People's Medical University Hospital for an autopsy. However, no FIR was lodged till the filing of this report.