RAWALPINDI: The family of the couple accused of murdering their eight-year-old maid has offered her parents a patch-up, it has been learnt.

Syed Fazal Hussain Shah, the grandfather of the minor girl, told Dawn on telephone that efforts had been made by the family members of the couple for a patch-up which was turned down.

“We only want justice,” he said.

Mr Fazal denied that the parents of the girl had sent their daughter to Rawalpindi after taking some payment from the couple.

“The parents were only assured that their daughter will go to school and would be cared well by the couple who had been blessed with a newborn baby.”

No salary was demanded or anything else except the girl’s parents had been assured that their daughter would get better education and would be brought up in a better environment in the city, he said.

“Since the girl was taken to Rawalpindi four months ago, she was allowed to talk to her parents only twice or thrice. She had a last telephonic conversation with her mother three days before Eidul Fitr but didn’t complain to her mother about anything apparently due to the fear of the couple.”

However, Mr Shah said the parents of the victim were assured that she would be allowed to go to her native town on Eidul Azha.

The girl, who had three brothers and two sisters, had not yet started her schooling due to poverty and was attending a madressah in her hometown of Lal Chandra in Muzaffargarh.

Meanwhile, police have also recovered some video clips from the mobile phones of the couple showing the girl being tortured and put in a cage, said a senior police official.

On the other hand, the police have decided to conduct DNA testing of the accused man to verify any sexual assault on the girl as the police had already added a section of the law covering rape charges. The couple was remanded on four-day police custody by a local court which was further extended for three days on Saturday.

Initially, the police had registered an FIR on the charge of attempted murder but after the girl’s death a murder charge was added to the case against the couple.

A police investigating officer told Dawn that the couple had confessed to beating the girl which claimed her life but denied that she was subjected to sexual assault.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2020