A local cleric in Gujrat Tehsil’s Kharian was arrested for allegedly killing his three-month-old daughter by throwing her into a canal, reportedly out of disappointment for not having a baby boy, police said this week, with rescue teams recovering the body on Friday.

According to the Dinga Police Station Station House Officer (SHO) Inspector Mujahid Abbas, the birth of baby Zainab was a point of contention between Ali Ahmed, 35, and his wife and they would quarrel often.

“On Thursday, the suspect took the child and threw her into the canal in front of his wife,” SHO Abbas alleged.

A First Information Report (FIR) was filed by Ayesha’s uncle under sections 302 (punishment for murder) and 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) of the Pakistan Penal Code with the Dinga Police Station.

In the FIR, the complainant said he saw the couple arguing at the side of the canal when the suspect took Zainab and threw her into the canal. Ayesha alleged in the FIR that Ali snatched Zainab from her and threw her into the canal with the intention of killing her.

Ali was arrested from a bus stop in the village of Amrah on Thursday, according to SHO Abbas.

Meanwhile, Rescue 1122 Punjab launched an operation to search for Zainab in the canal, said Rescue 1122 District In-Charge Umar Ghumman. He said that the rescue team reached the site of the incident in the presence of police and searched for Zainab over an area of ​​about five kilometres. The search team used boats and diving gear to find the child’s body.

“Today at around 07:15 am, the dead body of the girl was found floating near Saruki Bridge, about 25 kilometres from the crime scene,” Ghumman said in a statement.

“After police completed the medico-legal formalities, Zainab’s body was handed over to her heirs.”

Infanticide in Pakistan

According to a Dawn editorial, since 2021, the Edhi Foundation has buried 576 newborns in Karachi — 200 in 2021, 289 in 2022, and a minimum of 87 in the first half of 2023.

It also revealed that official records of infanticide were wildly at odds with the number of infants buried by the foundation, prompting Sindh Police to “issue formal instructions to register a criminal case if a dead newborn is found abandoned”.

In 2020, the Edhi Foundation recovered over 300 bodies of newborn babies, mostly girls, in different parts of Karachi, which were later buried in graveyards, according to charity officials.

The charity organisation’s spokesperson, Saad Edhi, said that as many as 375 bodies of newborn babies were found in open places or roadsides in the metropolis in 2019.

Faisal Edhi, head of the Edhi Foundation, told Dawn that there were several reasons behind this tragic situation. He said that the main plausible reason was that some people did not want daughters and claimed that when during ultrasound it transpired that the mother had conceived a girl, the family got an abortion as they preferred a male child due to societal pressure.