Man 'admits' raping, killing three-year-old in Karachi

KARACHI: A day after a three-year-old girl's body sexually assaulted body was found on a street in the city, a man has admitted to raping and killing her, Geo News reported citing the police on Thursday.

According to the police, the suspect — who is a rickshaw driver and neighbour of the victim — confessed to the crime after he was arrested following the incident on the morning of October 9 (Wednesday).

The suspect, identified as Naseer, was handed over to the police by people of the neighbourhood. He had put her body in a sack before throwing it on the street — as seen in an image extracted from a CCTV footage obtained by the police.

The toddler's body was found on a street near her residence in Gulberg. It had a dupatta tied around her neck as a noose — indicating that she may have been strangled — on the morning of Wednesday, said police.

Police officials also mentioned that the rape of the toddler was confirmed in the post-mortem report and that the suspect is being interrogated as part of the case's investigation.

After the victim's body was found a day earlier, it was taken to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities.

According to police, the little girl — identified as Amna — was the youngest of six siblings, and her father is currently in Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah.

Police said the girl had followed her siblings at around 7:15am when they left for school in the morning, and was found dead at 7:30am at a short distance from her home.

The victim's mother had maintained that they had no enmity with anyone.

According to police, the initial post-mortem report suggested that the girl was sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Police surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed, however, said the cause of death and opinion regarding sexual violence was reserved till the medical report.

The incident comes less than two months after a 12-year-old girl was allegedly raped and murdered before being thrown in a garbage dump in Karachi's Saddar area in August.

The victim was found stashed in a gunny bag from the garbage dump near Lucky Star.

Dr Summaiya, while citing the victim's autopsy report, had confirmed that the girl was subjected to "sexual abuse".

'Over 370m women, girls experience sexual assault before 18'

According to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (Unicef), more than 370 million girls and women alive today, or one in every eight worldwide, experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18.

The number rises to 650 million, or one in five, when taking into account "non-contact" forms of sexual violence, such as online or verbal abuse, Unicef reported, in what it called the first global survey of the problem.

Unicef said sexual violence cuts across geographical, cultural, and economic boundaries, but Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of victims, with 79 million girls and women, or 22% affected. Eastern and South-Eastern Asia follow with 75 million, or 8%.

In its data for women and girls, UNICEF estimated 73 million, or 9%, were affected in Central and Southern Asia; 68 million, or 14%, in Europe and Northern America; 45 million, or 18%, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 29 million, or 15%, in Northern Africa and Western Asia.

Oceania, with 6 million, had the highest number affected by percentage, at 34%.