PESHAWAR (Kashmir English): Police on Monday arrested a man on allegations of exhuming the bodies of deceased minor girls and sexually assaulting them in Peshawar.
Addressing a press conference, SP Saddar Fida Hussain said that police received information about the alleged incident at a graveyard in the Sheikhan area.
The official said that a graveyard watchman reportedly caught him while he was removing the body from the grave.
According to locals, the accused had been exhuming the bodies of girls for the past month. “This morning, the accused was caught red-handed while he was digging up a grave.”
Following the information, Badaber SHO Malang Jan and a police team reached the site and arrested the suspect, identified by police as 19-year-old Salman, son of an Afghan national and a resident of Bara Qadim.
SP said local residents became enraged after the incident and the suspect’s life was at risk. A police team reached the scene, rescued him from the crowd and shifted him to the police station.
A case has been registered against the suspect under relevant provisions of the Child Protection Act and other applicable sections of law, police said.
During the initial investigation, police said, the accused admitted to having previously exhumed graves on four occasions. According to the police account, he allegedly removed the bodies of deceased children and, in the case of girls, took the bodies to an isolated area where he sexually assaulted them.
Police further claimed that the suspect had been involved in the alleged acts for the past three to four months and that he lived near a graveyard. The official said he was arrested while attempting to repeat the act for a fifth time.
According to SP Fida Hussain, the suspect allegedly cleaned and dressed the bodies after removing them from the graves before sexually assaulting them.
Police said the suspect is a Hafiz-e-Quran and has completed his 12th-grade education. Officials also said he was not under the influence of drugs and was considered mentally sound during the initial investigation.
