The autopsy report of seven-year-old Sarim, a child who went missing from North Karachi on January 7 and was found after 11 days, has revealed he was subjected to sexual assault before getting murdered.

 

Media reports cite the police are now treating the child’s case, whose body was found in an underground water tank of the high-rise building, as a murder case.

 

He was reportedly subjected to a sexual assault before being murdered in Bilal Colony’s Anam Apartments.

 

According to news sources, Sarim was a student at Madrasah Al Quran who went to his seminary on January 7 but never returned.

 
After he went missing, his father, Parvez, went to the seminary to ask about his son but was told by the administration that he had left for home at 3:40 pm.

 
When the father was returning from the seminary, he reportedly spotted Sarim's gloves lying on the stairs inside a mosque.

 

After an extensive search, the police found the child’s body in a water tank in the building in the same vicinity on January 18.

 
The doctors who performed the autopsy revealed that the marks of injuries on the body suggested that it was “not an accidental death”.

 

In the initial briefing to the media, the police claimed to have been investigating the possible foul play or assault in the case. They also cited the possibility of the water tank not being properly covered, which may have caused the boy to fall inside if he had been playing nearby.

 

Later, however, the autopsy report has concluded that the child was raped.

 

As per the details, the victim had suffered 12 different injuries on various parts of the body and “all are antemortem (prior to death) except one injury”.

 

The report also outlined that although the body was found after 11 days, the examination of the body confirms that the boy had died “approximately four to five days” before the post-mortem.

 

The recent revelations have raised concerns about the investigating skills of the police’s efforts to recover the child, as it is clear now that he was alive at least a week after his kidnapping.

 

On the other hand, DIG-West Irfan Ali Baloch, in a statement, said that the exact cause and time of the death is yet to be confirmed by doctors and that he had not received the reports in this regard.

 

He informed that the police had already taken a teacher of the seminary in custody, and his DNA samples were taken for cross-matching with the samples of the victim.

 

The residents of Sarim’s neighbourhood expressed shock over his recovery, stating that law enforcement had checked the tank twice during the search but failed to find any sign of the child. Some speculated that the child’s body may have remained submerged and surfaced over time.

 

Read more: 7yo missing Karachi kid found dead after 11 days