LAHORE: An eight-year-old boy was allegedly sexually assaulted and strangled in Sherakot here on Wednesday.

The minor was found dead in an under-construction quarter, half a kilometre from his Yusuf Nagar house. A local had spotted his body which was covered with a piece of cloth.

Initial police inquiries said the boy was playing in the street outside his house with his friends on Tuesday afternoon. When he did not return home until the evening, the family got worried and started looking for him. But they failed to find him till late night and later alerted Sherakot police fearing the boy might have been kidnapped.

Iqbal Town Division Superintendent of Police (SP) Umar Farooq told Dawn on Wednesday that a local spotted the body of the boy and informed police. Police teams visited the crime scene and according to their initial investigation the boy was sexually assaulted and later killed to conceal the crime.

Farooq said police started an investigation and questioned locals, but found no clue to reach the culprit. He said there was only one CCTV camera outside a factory between the house of the boy and the quarter where his body was found. Nothing significant was found in the CCTV footage, he said, adding that some police informers were fielded in the area to glean maximum information to trace the culprits.

The SP said the body had been shifted to the city morgue for autopsy and further investigations were under way.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2018