Peshawar police arrest suspect for rape, murder of minor girls

PESHAWAR: The police have arrested a suspect who allegedly sexually assaulted and then murdered minor girls in Peshawar city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP), ARY News reported on Thursday.

The arrest was confirmed by KP Inspector General of Police (IGP) Moazzam Jah Ansari at a news conference in Peshawar. “The suspect is extremely vicious and a true psychopath,” he claimed.

The accused – identified as Sohail – worked as a craftsman doing embroidery on wedding clothes and is reportedly aged between 25 and 30. The KP IGP claimed that the accused has confessed to killing two girls after raping them, and would change his appearance before committing the crimes.

In his reported confession, he said he raped and killed a 10-year-old girl in the Railway Colony area on July 3, raped another victim on July 17 and also killed a girl in the Kalibari area after sexually assaulting her.

Moazzam Jah Ansari further said that the suspects always chose Sundays to hunt his victims. “In the first two incidents of child rape and murder, we could not find the suspect but after the third incident, we got a clue from the crime scene that led us to him,” the IGP explained.

According to the police chief, the team also sifted through more than 50 images of suspects and conducted DNA tests of 100 people, along with investigating 200 residences as part of their investigation.

He said that the increase in the number of child rape and murder cases in the provincial capital has put pressure on the cops to step up and solve the case soon.

K-P has recorded 185 molestation cases in 2019, 323 cases in 2020 and 360 cases in 2021, showing a disturbing upward trend.