ISLAMABAD, Feb 22: Police have ‘arrested’ an MA student for the recent rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl.

The student, a boyfriend of the girl’s tutor, has confessed to the crime.

Inspector Mehboob Ahmed, Station House Officer at Bhara Kahu, confirmed only that the accused was in police custody, and other senior police officials refused to comment on the case.

Requesting anonymity, an officer close to the investigation revealed that the girl’s tutor, after “typical investigation methods”, provided details that helped police track down the suspect. The tutor herself is out on interim bail, though she too is allegedly involved in the crime.

She told police that on February 12, she asked her student to come early the next day, as she had planned to meet her boyfriend in a deserted area near Bhara Kahu bazaar.

On February 13, the tutor took the girl with her to the bazaar, where her boyfriend “asked for physical relations”.

According to her statement, the officer said, the tutor refused these advances, and noticed that her denial “upset” her boyfriend.

In his statement, the accused said he later made the same proposal to his girlfriend’s 11-year-old student.

The police officer said that the man then forcibly raped the child, causing heavy bleeding. The girl later lost consciousness, and, assuming she had died, the man and the tutor set her on fire.

When the girl suddenly came to consciousness, he strangled her, breaking her neck. The tutor left for home, and the man called two friends to help him hide the body.

The accused’s statement reveals that he and his friends took the body first to Rawal Dam, but the number of people present made them abandon their plan to dump it in the water.

They eventually brought the girl’s body to I-9, where the man lived, and dumped it in a nullah behind Federal Primary School No. 2, in I-9/1.

The man sprinkled petrol on the girl’s body and set fire to it a second time.

The police officer said that she had “turned to coal” by the time her body was discovered.