Six more suspects arrested in Kurram minor rape-murder case

KURRAM: Six more suspects were arrested on Thursday in the Kurram minor girl rape-murder case, bringing the total number of detainees to eight, according to the district's top police official.

The district police officer (DPO) of the Kurram tribal district, Rahim Shah, said the DNA samples of the six men arrested on Thursday were sent to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) in Lahore for testing.

On the other hand, the commander of the Pakistan Army's 73rd Brigade, Brigadier Najaf Abbas, and its commanding officer, Colonel Muhammad Javed Ilyas Awan, also visited Pewar Ghundi Khel, a tribal area in Kurram Agency near the border, from where the five-year-old's body was recovered.

The visiting officers met with and collected important information from the deceased girl's family members, relatives, and school staff.

A few days ago, the five-year-old's body had been recovered from a pond in Pewar Ghundi Khel, as per police, who had added that it had been shifted to the district headquarters (DHQ) hospital of Parachinar for medical testing.

The report had confirmed Wednesday that she was raped before being murdered.

According to Kurram police, the medical report stated that the child had been sexually assaulted before she was killed but doctors added that her body did not bear any wounds or marks of torture.

The girl's grandfather, Gul Ali, 60, had told police that the girl had gone to the local government school — where she was a first-grader — in the morning but never returned. They started a search for her and, several hours later, found her body in a pond.

Her father, Waris Ali, is employed in the Frontier Corps as a Lance Naik and the girl was being raised by her grandmother as her mother had died four years ago. Her grandmother had gone into coma following the news.