Five-year-old girl missing for two weeks found dead in Haripur

The body of a five-year-old girl, who went missing from outside her home in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Haripur district two weeks back, was recovered from a well.

The girl had disappeared from outside her home at around 6pm on August 10, according to the police.

They later recovered CCTV footage and conducted geofencing in the area as part of the investigation. A first information report was registered on August 12 under Section 364-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, relating to kidnapping or abduction with intent to murder.

A police official said that police initially arrested three suspects, while one of them recorded a confessional statement before a magistrate on Saturday. According to the statement, four suspects were allegedly involved in abducting the girl and taking her to an area near Model Town, where two of them allegedly sexually assaulted her.

The three suspects initially arrested by police did not disclose where the girl had been taken after the alleged assault, the official said.

Investigators later obtained CCTV footage from another house in the area, which helped them identify and trace a fourth suspect.

Acting on information provided by the fourth suspect, police located the girl’s body in an abandoned well at a warehouse near a link road leading to Haripur University. He alleged that the suspect threw the girl into the well after sexually assaulting her and attempted to conceal her body with foliage.