Kounsar Bashir
At 6:40 pm on Wednesday, a minor girl left her home in the remote Khurhama Zab area of Lolab in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district and informed her parents that she would go out to play.
Hours later, her throat-slit body was found outside her home and her head buried under a cement bag.
Jammu Kashmir Police has said that that police will soon crack the murder case of the 8-year-old girl and that the killer will also be behind the bars soon. However, as of now, the Police have urged the locals to cooperate with them in the investigation and share input, if any, with the police.
Around 8 PM on Wednesday, a sudden noise created alarm in the Khurhama locality. As the locals gathered, Haji Salam, the grandfather of the girl informed the locals that the 8-year-old (name with held) had gone missing from her home. The locals gathered in large numbers and intensified their searches, however, they were not able to find the minor girl.
Family of the deceased girl spoke to The Kashmiriyat over the phone and said, when the 8-year-old was about to leave she asked her father for Rs 5 as she wanted to buy some snacks from the nearby shop.
“Before she could leave, her father left the house for some work and she insisted on going with her father and he refused,” the mother of the deceased said.
It was around 8PM that panic spread in the house when the girl did not return to her house. “We initially assumed that she was at her uncle’s house. However, she did not return till 8, When I found that she was not at her uncle’s house, I left the house and searched her everywhere in the surroundings in the village, I went to the relatives house but she was not there,” she said.
Father of the girl, who is an ambulance driver reached home in the meanwhile and joined the searches too, however, after failing to find the minor girl, the elders said that he along with some locals should approach the Police. “They left for the Police station and I continued my searches for my daughter,” the inconsolable mother said.
Around 9 PM, her mother went inside a shed that is used to store wood, where she saw her body lying in a pool of blood, her throat slit with a knife and a cement sack on her face.
The shed is not more than 10 meters away from her house. “I was scared, I could not dare to pull her body up, so I screamed and asked for others help,” the mother of the deceased said.
She said that she told her uncle and other neighbours to take her up but after they found that her throat was slit they refused and told her to wait for police investigation.
“I saw that her Hijab had been taken off and the five rupees her father had given to buy snacks were still tightly gripped in her palm. She could not buy the snacks she wanted to eat,” her mother told The Kashmiriyat.
The blood from the wound had dried up. “My husband was in the police station to file a complaint when we found her. When we found her my uncle called police station and told them we had found her and come with the man who is there to file a complaint,” he said.