LAHORE: Police claimed on Friday to have a ‘major breakthrough’ in the case pertaining to rape of a five-year-old girl in Lahore.

A police team arrested the ‘prime suspect’ in a raid on a rented house located next to the street of Ghausia Colony, Mughalpura, where the victim lived. A blood stained short trousers was also recovered from the house, the police claimed.

The footage captured by a CCTV installed at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, where the girl was abandoned by her rapist(s), had shown a man wearing similar trousers bringing the victim to the hospital.

A senior police official, privy to the case investigation, told Dawn that the arrested suspect was aged 20.

He said during the course of investigation, the police had found some important evidence with regard to the presence of the suspect in the same locality from where the girl was kidnapped.

The sketch drawn by police experts with the help of the CCTV footage also resembles the arrested suspect, he added.

The police official said the suspect had concealed his blood stained shirt and trousers in a portion of his rented house.

He said during questioning, the suspect kept changing his statements which further strengthened the suspicion about his involvement in crime.

He said the scope of case investigation had been widened on the basis of the information extracted from the suspect.

The police official termed arrest a major breakthrough in the case, saying samples of the blood found on the trousers of the suspect would be sent for forensic analysis. He said the swabs collected from the clothes of the victim had already been dispatched for forensic analysis.

A doctor involved in treatment of the victim told Dawn a team of senior medics had planned a second surgery of the girl that would be performed six weeks after the first one conducted on the day she was admitted to the Services Hospital.

He said the next surgery is for perineal repair which was one of the common procedures. The surgeons would stitch together torn or cut tissues for proper healing of the affected body part and it might be the last surgical intervention, he added.

To a question, the doctor said the victim was improving and no further complications were being faced.— Asif Chaudhry