He was only four years old and his body was found in a sewer. The gruesome story happened in Pakistan: according to an initial reconstruction, the little girl disappeared from her home, in the rural area of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (in the north-west), last Wednesday.
The child’s grandfather immediately filed a complaint with the local authorities and the police and relatives searched the area for the whole night. Two days later, the girl’s body was found by passers-by and then taken to hospital for an autopsy. The coroner’s report confirmed the signs of sexual assault.
But not only. The killer – or the killers – also tortured her before strangling her to death: the little girl, in fact, had bruises on several parts of her body, including her back. “The child was raped and then strangled to death,” confirmed the coroner’s report.
Suhail Khan, one of the policemen dealing with the case, said law enforcement had arrested at least 400 suspects in the area, including the girl’s relatives, and collected blood samples for DNA testing. The killing of the little girl provoked outrage throughout the country and the hashtag #JusticeForHareem (this is the victim’s name) immediately appeared on Twitter. Another similar case occurred last January.
In that case, a 7-year-old girl paid the price: Momina Larik, who worked as a maid in the house of a landowner in the southern province of Sindh, disappeared in the fields on her way home. Her body was found three days later: even in that case, the girl was raped and strangled. Last year, according to police data, the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 182 cases of child sexual abuse in eight months in the districts of Nowshera, Mansehra and Kohat. Although Pakistan applies severe punishments for violence against minors – including castration, life imprisonment and the death penalty – cases of sex crimes are still on the rise in the country. Just last year, Parliament passed a bill that provides for sentences ranging from a minimum of 10 years to a maximum of life imprisonment for those responsible for sexual offenses against children. But that doesn’t seem to stop the criminals.