KARACHl: Police on Tuesday claimed to have arrested an Afghan man for allegedly raping and murdering a six-year-old girl, whose body was found on the outskirts of the metropolis on Monday evening.

SSP-West Faisal Bashir Memon said that the girl had gone missing from her home in Afghan Camp on Monday evening.

He said that a little before sunset her father gave Rs10 to her daughter to buy something from a vendor outside their residence within the remit of the Gulshan-iMaymar police station. However, she did not return and the family launched a search operation.

Announcements were made from area mosques to find her whereabouts.

However, at 9:30pm, her body was recovered from an abandoned house damaged during recent rains near Afghan Camp, the SSP said.

The body was shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for a post-mortem examination, where initial findings confirmed that she was raped before being strangled.

The SSP said that police picked up a person acting on a lead provided by some persons regarding a man they saw roaming suspiciously around the victim`s house.

`The suspect has confessed to have raped and murdered the girl,` the SSP said, adding that the police also recovered the clothes he was wearing at the time of the incident.

Doctors who carried out the post-mortem examination took samples for DNA profiling and cross-matching.

The police said that the suspect and the victim both hailed from Afghanistan.

They said the suspect was jobless and said to be a neighbour of the victim girl.

A case was registered under Section 376 (punishment of rape) and 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code at the Gulshan-i-Maymar police station.