Karachi police on Monday said they arrested a second suspect in connection with the gang rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl during an “encounter”.

The body of a minor girl was found in a bag near a garbage dump in the city’s Lucky Star area on August 25. The autopsy had revealed that she was raped and strangled.

Last week, the police had claimed to have arrested what it described as the prime suspect in the crime.

“A highly wanted suspect was arrested in injured condition during a police encounter on Abdul Sattar Edhi Avenue in Defence’s Phase 8,” Deputy Inspector General (DIG)-South Syed Asad Raza said today.

He did not specify whether the suspect was already wounded or injured during the pursuit.

Noting that the suspect, Asim Ali, was wanted in the case of “rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl”, DIG Raza said he had “thrown her body near Lucky Star” after committing the crime.

“An accomplice of the suspect is already in custody,” the DIG said, referring to the arrest made last week. The case had been registered at the Saddar police station, Raza said.

DIG Raza had previously described the man arrested last week as the prime suspect, who he said was a watchman at the Bara Market near Cantonment Railway Station.

However, his two accomplices, who worked at the Shalimar bus terminal, were still at large, the official had stated.

DIG Raza also said that investigators had identified the victim as belonging to the Hindu community and living underneath the Lilly Bridge with her mother.

He said that the girl and her mother had come from Sukkur around 20 days before the incident to look after an ailing relative. Her mother also fell ill and went to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for treatment on the night of August 24. She returned to the bridge at around 2am but could not find her daughter.

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Sindh Governor Kamran Tessori and Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah had taken notice of the case and ordered the police to arrest the culprits involved.

According to Police Surgeon Summaiya Syed — who heads the team of medico-legal officers deputed in the city’s three major hospitals — 522 women and underage girls were sexually assaulted in Karachi alone during the year 2023.

More than 4,040 cases of physical assault on women were reported in the same year, while 22 bodies were exhumed on court orders, she had said.

Child abuse cases in country

In March this year, data released by Sahil — an NGO working for the welfare of children — revealed that in 2023, a total of 4,213 child abuse cases had been reported from all four provinces as well as the Islamabad Capital Territory, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB).

A gender-divide analysis of the data showed that out of the total reported cases, 2,251 (53 per cent) of victims were girls and 1,962 (47pc) were boys.

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The reported age showed that children were most vulnerable to abuse in the age group of 6-15 years, in which more cases of boys than girls were reported. Moreover, children as young as 0-5 years were also sexually abused.

The abuser’s category indicated that acquaintances were still the most involved in child sexual abuse, along with relatives, family members, strangers, and women abettors.

The geographical divide statistics show that out of the total 4,213 reported cases, 75pc were reported from Punjab, 13pc cases from Sindh, 7pc cases from Islamabad capital territory, 3pc cases from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and 2pc cases from Balochistan, AJK, and GB.