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Updated: Jan 11, 2018 18:08 IST

As Pakistan simmers under protests against the brutal rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kasur, a news anchor with Samaa TV protested by hosting a news bulletin with her daughter on Wednesday.

Kiran Naz, with her child on her lap, starts the bulletin by saying, “Today I’m not Kiran Naz. Today, I’m a mother. This is why I am sitting here with my daughter.”

The 1.50 minute long monologue by Naz sees her condemn the rapes and murders that plague the country. “It is true when they say that the smallest coffins are the heaviest and entire Pakistan is burdened by the weight of her coffin.”

Not often that you see a TV news anchor bring her own child to her news cast - @SAMAATV 's Kiran Naz did precisely that to make a point about how she felt as a mother in Pakistan #JusticeForZainab #Justice4Zainab pic.twitter.com/6XMXQJmfzV — omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) January 10, 2018

The alleged rape and murder of the 8-year-old girl triggered violent protests in Punjab province that left two people dead in police firing on Wednesday.

Kasur town, located a short distance from the border with India, had been tense after the girl disappeared on January 4 while on her way home from a tuition centre. Her parents were away on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, and her family circulated CCTV footage on social media that showed her with an unidentified man. Reports said the girl was allegedly raped multiple times before being strangled.

In the news bulletin, Naz points out the sad irony, that while the girl’s parents were praying for their daughter’s long life in Saudi Arabia and buying her toys, a “monster in Pakistan was raping her and throwing her body in trash. This is not just a child’s rape and murder. This is the entire society’s murder.”

Naz goes on to say that the 8-year-old’s rape and murder will once again initiate regret, investigation, committess, commission, enquiry and suo moto but, “the truth is that the girl does not need your justice. She will get justice by her God on Judgement Day when she questions her death and asks her fault.”

The girl’s father, on returning to Pakistan on Wednesday, told the media that he would not bury her till justice was done.

Naz ends the bulletin by saying that it is not just the girl who is dead, the whole of humanity died with her.

Local media reports said the girl’s murder was the twelfth such case in Kasur over a period of one year. Kasur had hit the headlines in 2015 when a gang of paedophiles running a child sex ring was busted in the town. The gang allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted 280 children and blackmailed the families of some victims since 2009.