KOHAT: The grandfather of the four-year-old girl, whose body was found in a drain about two weeks ago, has accused the police of wrongly charging a woman and protecting the male accomplice who allegedly molested and killed the child.

Addressing a press conference at his home at Khattak Colony here on Thursday, Haji Khanzada advocate said that from day one the police was pressurising and harassing them to blame the woman so much so that the police officer investigating the case summoned him to his office and forced him to submit his statement before the magistrate.

He demanded that the girl’s body should be exhumed and postmortem conducted again because the police were now denying their own report.

He expressed dissatisfaction over the investigations because the police had been unable to make the accused woman speak in 10 days.

Mr Khanzada claimed the police were covering up the whole case and giving it a twist just to get appreciation from the public. He added that the police had claimed to have arrested 100 people, but they were those who had staged a protest on the day of recovery of the body.

He said if the police had conducted a proper search the girl could have been alive today. He also said that the police was making a statement on their own that the woman took revenge from the girl’s father for opposing her marriage with his brother. He said that neither his brother nor the woman had expressed any interest in the marriage otherwise they would have told them about it and got married.

Claims police protecting male accomplice of the arrested woman

Mr Khanzada also rejected the medical board constituted for conducting the postmortem to ascertain whether the victim was molested or not and said that the lady doctor had said in the presence of police high-ups that she had been assaulted sexually. He said the police handed him over the postmortem report.

He said the woman had said in her statement that she kidnapped the girl, but did not want to kill her and some accident occurred. He demanded that the police should investigate what accident occurred.

On Wednesday, the police said to have arrested a young woman for her involvement in the murder of the four-year-old girl.

According to police investigations, the woman wanted to take revenge from the victim’s father for opposing her marriage with his brother whom she loved and both wanted to marry.

The accused has now been formally nominated in the FIR under section 302 of PPC related to murder and section 53 of Child Protection Act, filed by the grandfather of the girl on the day she went missing. She was presented in the court which sent her to the prison.

District police officer Sohail Khalid told a press conference here that the accused woman had admitted that she had extreme anger over the opposition of her marriage by the girl’s father and decided to take revenge from him by killing her.

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2021