Hundreds of protesters enraged over the murder of a young girl threw stones at government buildings in a Pakistani city near the Indian border for a second day yesterday, amid growing outrage over the killing.
The demonstrators hurled projectiles at a hospital, attacked the home of at least one local politician, and complained of police inaction in the city of Kasur in Punjab province, a day after two protesters were killed when the rallies turned violent.
The outrage has spilled over in Kasur after the body of a child was found in a garbage heap on Tuesday, where she is believed to have been dumped after being raped and murdered.
The child, named as Zainab Ansari, is the eighth minor to have been raped and murdered in Kasur in the past 12 months, police have said.
Officials had earlier put her age at eight, but her family told AFP that she was just six years old.
“Up to 1,000 protesters are in the streets,” Kasur police spokesman Muhammad Sajid told AFP. “They have thrown stones on the buildings of the government hospital, police and deputy commissioner’s office ... security is deployed and trying to control the situation.”
The demonstrators had accused police of failing to act over the child murders.
Sajid said that up to 20 suspects had been apprehended “but the investigators have been unable to find any clue so far”.
“Police are not co-operating with us,” Ghulam Rasool, an uncle of Zainab, told AFP. “We want justice. We want the culprit to be brought in front of us. We don’t want an innocent to be presented as the culprit and killed just to wash this case.”
Zainab’s killing has sparked a social media deluge, with politicians, celebrities, cricketers and average Pakistanis demanding #JusticeForZainab.
On Wednesday at least two protesters were killed when police fired into the crowd of demonstrators as they tried to storm a government building in Kasur, a senior police official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The spokesman for the Punjab provincial government, Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan, told Reuters that protesters turned violent and attacked a local police office.
“They started throwing stones at the office and some of armed protesters shot bullets at police. In order to stop them, police resorted to aerial firing,” he said.
Locals said police responded with undue force.
“A peaceful protest was taking place, some students threw stones and police responded by firing at the crowd,” Saleem ur Rehman, a resident who was at the protest, told Reuters. “The law and order situation here is really bad and there have been many such incidents. That is what the protest was about.”
Zainab’s parents, who were not in the country when their daughter was kidnapped, returned on Wednesday.
“I want justice! I want justice!” her mother cried, surrounded by reporters at the international airport in the capital Islamabad.
The case has attracted the attention of the country’s civilian and military leadership, with Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif calling for immediate action.
Police in Kasur deny that they have been lax in investigating child abductions in the town.
Regional police officer Zulfiqar Hameed told Reuters that four kidnappers had been arrested and another killed during an arrest attempt.
“Investigations reveal that in each case a paedophile kidnaps little girls, rapes them and kills them,” he said.
The case of Zainab Ansari would soon be solved, Hameed said, adding that “we have CCTV (closed circuit TV) footage that shows a man taking her”.
“We will catch him very soon,” he said, adding that 95 DNA samples had been taken from suspects.
Anger at police has been fuelled by Kasur’s infamy as the site of what has been dubbed Pakistan’s largest child abuse scandal.
The 2015 scandal saw allegations that at least 280 children were filmed being sexually abused by a gang of 25 men who blackmailed their parents by threatening to leak the videos.
It came to light after parents of the victims clashed with police in Kasur during a protest blasting authorities for failing to prosecute the case.
The Punjab government has announced a reward of Rs10mn ($90,000) for information leading to the killer’s capture, as well as compensation packages for the protesters killed on Wednesday.
A girl holds up a picture of Zainab Ansari during a protest yesterday in Islamabad.
