With Accused In Custody, Dadu Police Investigate Rape And Murder Of 16-Year-Old Student

With Accused In Custody, Dadu Police Investigate Rape And Murder Of 16-Year-Old Student
SSP Dadu Irfan Ali Samo claimed this week to have arrested the prime suspect in the murder case of a 16-year-old Nagina Chandio, a 9th-grade student. Talking to The Friday Times – Naya Daur, the SSP said that a police team arrested one Mehtab Chandio on Saturday, a close relative of the murdered girl, who also confessed to having committed the crime of abducting and killing the teenage girl.

The arrested Mehtab Chandio claims that he and his friend Shoukat Chaana had taken the girl to Balochistan after she had ‘eloped’ with him for contracting a marriage. He says that the student used to talk to him on the phone, and that he and his friend lured her to elope with him to get married. "We deceived the girl and took her to various places and then killed her and dumped her body in the grass near Sita Road town,” he says. The accused Mehtab Chandio was the brother of her sister’s husband, so nobody had at first suspected his involvement in the heinous crime.

Chandio says that after taking the girl to some areas of Balochistan, they had run out of money and so they returned by selling their cell phones. “When we reached back, Nagina requested us to kill her instead of handing over to her relatives," he claims. He also confessed that both had raped the girl during her stay with them for some days.

SSP Samo says that though it was a “blind murder case,” yet police team teams under the supervision of sub-inspector Ghulam Mustafa Pathan along with team members using “modern technology” traced the prime suspect. The SSP adds that raids were conducted to arrest another culprit and that a fresh FIR would be registered against the actual killers as per the demand of the father of the murdered girl.

Former SSP Dadu Aijaz Hussain Sheikh had formed a committee under the supervision of DSP Mehar to trace the killers of the teenager, whose trussed-up body was found dumped in a farm near Mehar town on 21 January last month. The DHO Dadu Dr. Abdul Hameed, citing the postmortem examination report, had said that marks from injuries inflicted with some sharp object were found on the legs, arms, back and other parts of the body of the victim. Authorities say that the hands and legs of the 16-year-old were tied with ropes and then she was mercilessly killed by the accused.

The father of the victim Roshan Chandio, a schoolteacher, had lodged a complaint against seven persons at the Mehar police station on 19 January, stating that his daughter was feared to have been kidnapped. Two days later, her body was found in a farm located near Mohib Ali Junejo village within the jurisdiction of the Radhan police station of Dadu district. Eventually, a murder FIR against three unknown suspect was registered at the Sita Road town police station.

The writer can be reached at hanifsamoon@gmail.com