Missing 7-year-old found dead in apartment's underground water tank
KARACHI: Police discovered the body of seven-year-old Mohammed Sarim in the underground water tank of his apartment building, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Central Zeeshan Shafiq Siddiqi said on Saturday.
Noting that the child's body had been sent for postmortem, the police officer remarked that it seemed that Sarim had fallen in the tank accidentally.
The unfortunate development comes as Sarim went missing 11 days ago on January 7 from North Karachi Sector 5 within the limits of the Bilal Colony police station.
A First Information Report (FIR) was lodged under 364-A (kidnapping or abducting a person under the age of 14) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
Meanwhile, the seven-year-old's parents had previously claimed to have received a message from an international number demanding ransom from them.
"For the past two days, my wife has been receiving messages stating that if we want the child back, we have to pay Rs500,000," said Sarim's father, The News reported.
The number, as per the father's statement on Tuesday, was from a Middle Eastern country.
Sarim's disappearance was followed by another kidnapping incident involving five-year-old Aliyan and six-year-old Ali Raza from the city's Garden area.
Incidents of children going missing raised alarm bells among the city's residents with Sindh Inspector General Police (IGP) Ghulam Nabi constituting a special unit for missing children.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah also took notice of the incident directing the Karachi Police to immediately recover the children and submit a report