KARACHI: Police have arrested the prime suspect accused of killing four people whose partially decomposed bodies were found in a pit off Karachi’s Mai Kolachi Road earlier this week, authorities said on Sunday, adding that the suspect had confessed to the crime.

According to police, the four bodies — of a woman and her three children — were recovered from a pit off Mai Kolachi Road on Friday night in the limits of the Docks police station. Police said the bodies had marks of torture, and the deceased appeared to have been killed with an axe or another sharp-edged object.

A statement by the office of Sindh Home Minister Ziaul Hasan Lanjar said today the prime suspect in the case had been arrested by Kaemari police and had confessed to the crime during interrogation.

South Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police Asad Raza also confirmed the development to Dawn, saying that digital forensics of the mobile of the deceased woman had established that the suspect had been in contact with her.

“He wanted to get rid of her,” the DIG said.

Police also shared a video of the suspect, in which he said he had been friends with the deceased woman for a long time.

The suspect alleged that she had been using black magic and would often make demands, due to which he was under mental pressure.

“She would take me to people who practice black magic,” he alleged, adding that she had taken him to one such individual on Tuesday night as well.

He said he had decided by then that “either I will kill myself or her”, adding that he killed her and then dumped her body in a pit.

The suspect added that he then went to her mother’s house, took her children — who too would often make demands and “pressurise” him — killed them and dumped their bodies in the same pit.

He said he killed them because they had seen him leaving the house with their mother.

The statement from Lanjar office said he had lauded Kaemari Senior Superintendent of Police Amjad Shaikh and his team for the suspect’s arrest.

FIR

On Saturday, the Docks police registered a first information report (FIR) of the incident under Sections 302 (premediated murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code against unknown persons for brutally killing the woman and her three children.

The case was registered on behalf of the state through police officer Mohammed Azhar.

The complainant narrated the recovery of the bodies and said in the FIR that “the circumstances give rise to suspicions that the victims were killed elsewhere and their bodies were later dumped in a dried manhole”.