Pakistani school guard arrested after he allegedly attempted to rape 5-year-old

Police in Pakistan's Karachi city have arrested a school guard after he allegedly tried to rape a minor girl.

The unidentified accused was taken into custody after the five-year-old told her parents about the attempted abuse. The child's parents said that she complained about the guard after returning from school on Thursday, 11 January.

Pakistan's Geo TV reported that the girl's family reached the school in the Ibrahim Hyderi area of the city on Friday and beat up the man before handing him over to the authorities.

Deputy Inspector General East Sultan Khawaja told the network that they have started their investigation and have interrogated the suspect, while the Chief Minister of Sindh state has asked for a detailed report of the incident at the earliest.

The incident comes amid ongoing protests against the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl, Zainab Ansari, from Pakistan's Kasur.

Zainab's body was found 2km away from her house on 9 January by passers-by, five days after she was kidnapped on 4 January. The girl was on her way to a Quran recital when a man approached her, grabbed her by the hand and led her away.

Police suspect that Zainab's alleged rapist is the same person who abducted, raped and murdered five other children in the city of Kasur in 2017, local media reports stated.

Kasur, an hour's drive from Lahore, has witnessed a surge in child abuse cases in recent years.

In 2017 alone, the city saw 12 cases of rape and murder, Punjab's Child Protection Bureau said. One of those cases was that of six-year-old Kainaat Batool, who was raped when she left her home to buy yoghurt from a nearby shop.

The girl had left her home on the evening of 11 November but did not return home. Sometime later she was found lying in a trash pile outside the city's main wholesale market. After being treated at a hospital, the little girl is back home, but still struggling with the horror of what happened to her.

Kainaat's father, Ehsan, told Geo TV: "The day we found her, we rushed her to Lahore's Children Hospital. She stayed there till Jan 2, after which the doctors said it was best to take her home.

"But we knew she was not yet okay."

Data from Pakistan's social awareness organisation Aahung suggests that nearly 47% of child sexual abuse incidents happen at the hands of relatives. It further mentions that about 43% of the offenders are known to the child, while only 7% are outsiders.