MUZAFFARABAD: A postgraduate university student on Sunday confessed to strangling to death a young girl and later dumping her body in an out-of-use manhole in the courtyard of his house in Abbaspur area of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), hours after being taken into custody on the basis of solid evidence against him, officials said.

In the light of his confession, the police recovered the body of the 13 years old victim, who was related to him and lived next door, Assistant Commissioner Abbaspur Syed Tassawar Kazmi, who had accompanied the police team, toldDawnby telephone.

The victim, a student of sixth grade, was laid to rest in the afternoon after the postmortem examination, Mr Kazmi added.

On Monday last (Aug 16), the victim’s father, a low-paid worker, had informed Abbaspur police station in the constituency of AJK Prime Minister Abdul Qayyum Niazi that his daughter had been missing from home.

Presumably relying on a text message he had received, he stated in his application that she had been “trapped and abducted by some Mohammad Rafaqat, a resident of Sargodha”.

On his complaint, the police registered an FIR under sections 16/11/19 of ZHA and started investigations.

In the meanwhile, in an attempt to distract the investigating team, another message from the same SIM card, purported to have been written by the victim, was received wherein she said she had changed her clothes at a particular place [near her home] and had arrived at her destination in Sargodha and that there was no use to trace her.

Mr Kazmi said a third message from the same SIM card, which later turned out to have been stolen from some labourer in Abbaspur, was also sent on behalf of the victim wherein she said she had reached Muzaffarabad.

“In some messages, the suspect tried to give the impression as if the girl had eloped with someone and in others as if she had been abducted,” he said.

Ironically, the suspect,a postgraduate student in the University of Poonch,was among those protesting against the “failure of police in making any headway in the case”.

Mr Kazmi said when the police summoned the suspect to the station for the first time, he responded to their questions with complete confidence.

However, evidence gained from geo-fencing and other investigation techniques, strengthened the suspicion of the investigating team that he was behind the disappearance of the victim, Mr Kazmi said, adding that the police summoned him for the second time on Saturday night from his university and he was quite angry at them for being disturbed again and again.

However, during interrogation, he confessed to his crime in the small hours of Saturday.

Mr Kazmi said the suspect had told the police that since the girl became pregnant as a result of their sexual relations, he decided to eliminate her by strangling.

He further toldthe police that after dumping the body in the manhole he threw two feet of earth on it.

The suspect had also erected walls around the invisible manhole apparently to build an external kitchen, which were demolished by the police.

Mr Kazmi said he had remanded the suspect in police custody until August 28.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2021