— File photo

The minor’s body was recovered from Nazimabad’s Jalalabad area within the remits of the Rizvia Police Station, however, it is not yet clear where the rape and murder took place.

Speaking to Dawn, Additional Police Surgeon Dr Rohina Hasan, who conducted the minor’s autopsy, said she was subjected to sodomy.

Liaquatabad Superintendent of Police (SP) Tahir Noorani said the family members of the victim claim that her body was found in a street outside her home. The police later recovered the body from her residence.

Last year in November, a six-year-old girl was strangled and dumped near a garbage heap in Quetta after being subjected to rape attempts.

Read more: Six-year-old Hazara girl murdered in Quetta after attempted rape

In November last year, a five-year-old girl was allegedly raped at a high school in Lahore.

In Sept 2013, a five-year-old girl in Lahore was repeatedly raped for more than a hour and thrown outside the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. The incident had shocked the nation and was widely condemned.

Rape is notoriously difficult to prosecute in Pakistan, where women are often treated as second-class citizens.

In April 2011, the Supreme Court had upheld the acquittal of five men sentenced to death in Pakistan’s most famous rape case, that of Mukhtar Mai.

Mai was gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council as punishment, after her brother, who was aged just 12 at the time, was accused of having illicit relations with a woman from a rival clan.

A local court had sentenced six men to death, but a higher court acquitted five of them in March 2005, and commuted the sentence for the main accused, Abdul Khaliq, to life imprisonment.