Police in Pakistan's Punjab province have arrested a man for allegedly raping and killing a 15-year-old girl. The man was apparently in a relationship with the victim's sister who had recently died by suicide.
The incident occurred in the Daulat Nagar locality of the city of Gujrat.
The victim’s mother lodged a complaint with the Daulat Nagar police on September 6 that her daughter had gone missing after leaving home to buy groceries from a nearby shop. When she did not return after some time, she along with her relatives and neighbours started looking for her, local media reported.
However, she said, some locals told her that her daughter had been seen along with a man who also lived in the same area, Pakistani media outlets reported.
According to reports, local residents heard the girl’s cries from the nearby fields where the suspect was seen pouring something from a bottle into the girl’s mouth.
As the people made their way to the fields, the suspect fled from the scene and the girl said that she had been raped and consumed a poisonous substance, which was given to her by the accused.
The girl was shifted to Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Teaching Hospital where doctors pronounced her dead after a short while.
District Police Officer Umar Farooq Salamat told a local newspaper that the police had arrested the suspect and were interrogating him, while the autopsy of the deceased had already been conducted.
He added that police had also collected forensic evidence from the crime scene through a Gujranwala-based team of the Punjab Forensic Science Agency and samples for DNA testing of the suspect had also been collected and sent to the agency.
He said the forensic test report would further help ascertain the facts.
Another police official told local media that previously, the suspect had an affair with the victim’s older sister. He would usually visit their house as well as help the family financially, he was quoted as saying.
However, he further claimed, the suspect later developed a relationship with the teenager. Her older sister apparently tried to convince the man to marry her, but he refused and she died by suicide around three weeks ago, by consuming poisonous pills. Her family buried her without informing anybody.
The official alleged that the teenager could have also committed suicide like her sister over fear that her parents would find out about their relationship, and added that further investigations are underway.
