Srinagar, Jan. 24 (TNS): As Pakistan grapples with bringing the perpetrators of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari’s murderer to justice, another heinous killing across the border, in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir, has shocked local residents.
On January 17, the battered, lifeless body of eight-year-old Asifa Bano was found in a forest in Hiranagar area of occupied Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district. News reports in Kashmir’s local press said Asifa appeared to have been raped and tortured before she was killed, and that there were human bite marks on her body.
Asifa Bano had been missing for a week before her body was recovered.
Family members told local media that they had filed a First Information Report after she went missing, but that police were slow to investigate her disappearance. Asifa and her family belonged to the Gujjar-Bakarwal semi-nomadic tribe.
Local officials, citizens, and journalists in Jammu and Kashmir have all decried Asifa’s gruesome murder and have drawn parallels with the killing of Zainab Ansari in Pakistan. There also have been public demanding justice for the child.
