SUKKUR: Three young children who had gone missing a day before were found dead in a large trunk used for keeping blankets, sheets, pillows, quilts, rillis etc in their house in Smang Wada village within the jurisdiction of B-Section police station in Khairpur district on Wednesday.

Sources in the village said that two siblings Madad Ali, 6, his sister Mehnaz, 4, children of Shahnawaz Shaikh, and Arif, 10-year-old son of their maternal uncle Irfan Ali Shaikh, were alone in the house when their mothers went to Khairpur to collect support cash of Benazir Income Support Program.

When the mothers came back, they did not find the children at home and informed their fathers, who along with other relatives, started searching for them. They reported their disappearance to the area police after failing to find them till Wednesday morning.

Shahnawaz Shaikh, father of two victims, told media persons that they found all the children dead in the large trunk. The area police rushed to the village and shifted dead bodies to civil hospital on the parents’ insistence.

Sources said that the dead bodies remained in the hospital for several hours without post mortem, sparking protest by the bereaved families after which medical superintendent of the civil hospital intervened to have the autopsy conducted.

The traumatised fathers said while talking to media persons that they believed their children had been throttled to death and then placed in the trunk to make it look an accident.

They demanded Khairpur SSP Zubair Nazeer Shaikh form a committee to conduct an impartial investigation into the tragedy and bring the children’s killers to justice.

Sources said that many villagers believed the children were more likely to have entrapped themselves in the trunk by accident while playing and died of suffocation.

Meanwhile, the SSP Shaikh reached the village, inspected the trunk where the children were found dead, talked to the bereaved fathers and assured them of thorough investigation into the tragedy.

Mr Shaikh told media persons that in the light of preliminary investigation it was premature to say whether it was murder or accident. “We have collected evidence and are investigating the deaths from every angle. We will have to wait till the post mortem report is issued,” he said.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2024