The body of a 15-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and murdered was recovered from a field in Tasawarabad, some 40 kilometres from Sargodha, as the country reels from the brutal murder of six-year-old Zainab in Kasur.

Sajida, a resident of Tasawarabad Chak No. 15 NB of tehsil Bhalwal, went missing this morning. Her father alleged that she had been sexually assaulted and killed.

District Police Officer (DPO) Sargodha Chaudhry Sohail reached Tasawarabad as protests against the murder were underway and assured the victim's father that the culprits would be taken to task.

Police claim to have arrested a prime suspect in the case. Identified as Noor Ameen, the suspect confessed to Sajida's murder but denied the accusations of rape. He did not, however, deny the accusations of attempted rape.

Police said that the truth would be uncovered after a postmortem examination, and the DPO directed police to shift the body to a hospital for the examination.

The DPO added that he would bear all the funeral expenses of the deceased.

Another molested body of an 11-year-old boy was found on Thursday from a field in the already restive Kasur district, where people are protesting against the brutal murder and rape of a 6-year-old girl.

Body of boy recovered from sugarcane fields

Farmers reaping sugarcane crop found the body of a boy on Thursday, who was later identified as Shariq, UC Chairman Rana Mohammad Aslam told Dawn.com.

The deceased victim, a sixth-grade student at a local government school, was the resident of Dholan village in Pattoki.

Munawar Hussain, the paralysed father of the victim, told the media that his son went missing on Tuesday evening after he headed outside on a bicycle. A first information report (FIR) was lodged on Tuesday after the family found that the boy had been missing.

Initial reports suggested that the boy was sexually assaulted before he was strangled to death, said Rana Mohammad Aslam.

In November 2017, a 10-year-old street vendor Ali Raza was sexually assaulted and murdered in the jurisdiction of the same police station. The victim's father protested as police avoided registering a case, after which Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif took notice of the incident and suspended the station house officer and deputy superintendent police of the area.

In Bhalwal tehsil, a 7-year-girl was abducted while going to school and later found dead in the fields. Her killer was arrested and killed in a police encounter around four months ago.

Similarly, the alleged murderer and rapist of an 8-year-old child whose body was found in a pile of trash on Jan 4 was killed in a police encounter in Sheikhupura on Wednesday night.