Kiran Naz, a news person at Saama TV, has protested the brutal rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl in Pakistan by bringing her daughter to the news broadcast.
Holding her daughter in her lap, Ms. Naz opened the channel’s news bulletin saying that she is not Kiran Naz today, but a mother. She went on to blame the government’s inefficiency for the incident and called it a murder of humanity.
The girl in Kasur district of Punjab province was abducted last week outside her home. Her body was found in a rubbish dump on Tuesday. She had gone to a religious tuition centre near her house in Kasur city, some 50 km from Lahore, on January 5 from where a man said to be a ‘serial killer’ abducted her, police said.
“A serial killer seems to be behind this incident. That serial killer may have been involved in other eight such cases in Kasur,” senior police officer Zulfiqar Hameed said.
The distraught father of the victim has blamed the “callous attitude” of police as the government roped in military intelligence and the ISI to probe the horrific incident that shocked the country.
The child’s parents were in Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah and she had been living with a maternal aunt.
According to a preliminary post-mortem report, the girl was raped multiple times before being strangled to death. There were visible marks of torture on her face, congestion in her muscles.
The horrific incident triggered public outage throughout the country with people demanding justice for the child. The protests continued for the second day.
The protesters attacked the out house of a ruling PMLN legislator in Kasur and set ablaze his two cars. They also ransacked a district hospital in Kasur.
In Lahore, angry demonstrators blocked Ferozpur Road suspending the metro bus service. In Rawalpindi, traffic remained suspended for several hours as protesters demanded justice for her.
Police opened fire at the protesters that left two people dead.
‘No faith in Punjab police’
“My daughter could have been saved had police acted when she was abducted on January 5,” Muhammad Amin told reporters. He said he had no faith in Punjab police to trace the killers of his daughter.
“Police was quick to open fire on the people seeking justice for my daughter but showed it’s routine callous attitude to trace her when she had gone missing,” he said. “I have appealed to the army chief and the chief justice of Pakistan to give me justice as I have no faith in Punjab government and police,” he said.
The chief justice has taken suo motu notice of the incident while the army chief ordered the ISI and military intelligence to help police trace the girl’s killers.
Geo News published the last poem written by her on January 4 before she was kidnapped.
Meanwhile, Punjab government announced 10 million Pakistani rupees reward for providing information of the killers. “We have registered a murder case against four policemen involved in the killing of two protesters,” the police said.
According to a NGO Sahil, every day more than 11 children under the age of 18 fall prey to sexual abuse in Punjab province of Pakistan.
Last year 4,139 incidents of child abuse took place in the province where 43 per cent of victims knew the perpetrators.
