PESHAWAR: The Peshawar city police have arrested a 27-year-old man for kidnapping and murdering a teenage boy in the Rano Ghari area of the city.

An official at the Shahpur police station told Dawn that the slain identified as Gul Rehman, 14, had been missing since December 22.

His family had reported to the police that he went out of his home and did not return.

The official said that during the course of investigation through checking of phone records of the relatives police arrested a young man identified as Sher Afzal who, during the initial investigation, informed the police investigators that he had killed the child and dumped his body.

The body was recovered during the early hours of Tuesday.

“The accused told the investigators that he liked the child and killed him as he was friends with someone else,” the official said.

He said that the autopsy report would determine whether or not the slain was sexually assaulted before murder.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2021