Women's lobby group demands inquiry into girls' murder

The chairperson of the country's special commission on women said on Friday that she had written a letter to the governor of the southern province of Sindh, asking him to initiate an inquiry into the killing of two girls in the port city of Karachi last week. "The entire nation is shocked by the brutal murder of those two girls. I have written a letter to the governor, requesting him to initiate a thorough inquiry," Justice (retd) Majida Rizvi, the head of the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. Hajra, 8, and Sassi, 5, were initially feared kidnapped when they disappeared from outside their home last Saturday. But their decomposed bodies - also reportedly dismembered by stray animals - were discovered two days later in the compound of a veterinary hospital, illegally occupied by policemen from the police station next door. Three policemen were arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday, following the intervention of the province's governor after angry family members and other residents of the low-income area protested against the initial refusal of local police to register a case. "These culprits, who are allegedly the police officers, should not be let off. They should be given exemplary punishment," Rizvi stressed, adding that the NCSW would be monitoring the investigation. "We should be kept abreast of what is happening and what steps the Sindh government has taken," she maintained. The results of an autopsy, reported by Dawn, a leading English-language broadsheet, confirmed that the little girls, who are cousins, were murdered - the older one by a series of blows to the head, while the younger one appeared to have been shot through the back of the head. Both corpses were found bundled in a row of bushes next to the veterinary hospital in varying stages of decay and "severely dismembered as dogs and cats nibbled and gnawed at them", the report in Dawn said. "We are really shocked," Rizvi repeated. "The NCSW is keeping track of what is happening," she added.