Esa Nagri case: Five-year-old subjected to horror even after death, say police

KARACHI: The two men who confessed to raping a minor girl earlier this month here in the metropolis continued the horrific sexual assault even after the six-year-old succumbed to the ordeal, police officials said late Thursday, in what comes as the latest development in the Esa Nagri case.

The child, who was reported missing on September 4 after she went to purchase sweets from a neighbourhood shop in the Old Sabzi Mandi area, was found dead two days later, with rescue officials saying her burnt body — stuffed in a bori (gunny bag) — was recovered from a garbage dump in Karachi's Esa Nagri neighbourhood.

Two of the 11 suspects detained in the case had a day earlier confessed to raping and killing the six-year-old girl.

Read more: Karachi men confess to raping, killing six-year-old girl

Officials investigating the rape and murder case said the arrested suspects had taken the child to the roof of the house and had subjected her to rape there.

“This is not just a rape case but a gang-rape case,” a police officer familiar with the investigation said, adding that the fingerprints of both suspects had also matched.

One of two suspects was deported from UK

Samples, the officer added, were also taken from the girl’s clothes and the bed of one of the suspects, Faiz, alias Faizu.

Faiz and Abdullah — the two prime suspects who confessed to the gang-rape — lived in the same area where the five-year-old's house is located, police said, adding that the former is a tailor by profession and the latter a garbage picker of Afghan origin.

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They said Abdullah had lived in the UK for seven years until he was deported. It was Faiz who had first kidnapped the child, they added, but both men had raped her.

Police had said Thursday that Faiz was a habitual offender and lived alone a few houses away from the child's residence in the same street. He had revealed the name of his accomplice, Abdullah, who lived on a footpath in the area after he was taken into custody.

Wronged even after death

Faiz informed police that they had kidnapped the minor girl and brought her to his house, before raping her one by one, during which she died. He also confessed that the two had continued raping the child even after she died before wrapping her body in a waistcoat and stuffing it in a gunny bag to dump at the garbage site at Milk Plant plot in the PIB Colony police station's jurisdiction.

While both had confessed to the crime on Thursday, officials said they now had the fingerprint report that pointed towards Faiz and Abdullah’s involvement in the gang-rape and murder. However, a DNA report was yet to be released.

One of the investigators in the Esa Nagri case said Faiz’s house is located across the girl's. "The piece of cloth wrapped around [her] body was taken from Faiz’s shop," the official said.