Life is getting Tougher

A bouquet and a soft toy are left where the girl's body was found.

Even in death, her bruised and battered face is angelic. She was so young, between 8 and 10 years old. Other than the horrific circumstances of her murder, nothing is known about her. Who is she? Where did she come from? Where are her parents? Does she have a family? Had she been abandoned? Or kidnapped?

PETALING JAYA: The only thing police have on her is her picture in death. And while the authorities are trying to discover her identity, public outrage is growing at the sadistic killing of this child.

Even the police are appalled at the circumstances leading to her death and have more questions than answers.

- Where are her parents?
- Why was the child separated from her parents?
- Why hasn't anyone come forward to claim her body?
- Was she homeless?
- Was her disappearance ever reported?
Police are now sifting through files of children reported missing in the past several weeks. The file search has been extended to police stations in surrounding states.

The victim is aged between 8 and 10, is 150cm tall, fair skinned, weighs 18kg, has curly short hair, a sharp nose and a birth mark on her left thigh.

The child's naked body was found stuffed in a foetal position inside a gym bag on Monday morning. The bag was left in front of a shoplot in PJS 1/48.

The assailant(s) had been thorough. The child's body was wiped clean of evidence. The gym bag was new.

Petaling Jaya police chief ACP Arjunaidi Mohamed said a post-mortem conducted by the Kuala Lumpur Hospital showed that the girl died of an infection.

Her intestines had ruptured after foreign objects were forced into her private parts. There was no trace of semen.

Arjunaidi said bruises on her body suggested that she was tortured before she died.

Police are trying to identify several people captured by closed-circuit television cameras near the shop where the bag was left.

It is also learnt that they are studying images of a woman walking down a staircase where the bag was left and entering a car driven by another person.

Arjunaidi appealed to those with information on the case to contact the nearest police station immediately.

Police have not ruled out the possibility that a serial molester, known as the "Kampung Baru molester", may have progressed to murder and is behind this barbaric act.

Two girls, aged 5 and 6, were similarly tortured by this man recently, with foreign objects forced into their private parts.

They were approached separately by a man on a motorcycle who asked their help in locating his missing cat.

The girls were taken away and molested and reports stated that they, too, had foreign objects, forced into their private parts.

Following the two incidents at the Kampung Baru area in the past three months, police had set up a task force to hunt down the culprit, but so far their efforts have failed.

Incensed by the two incidents, residents in the area had formed vigilante groups to hunt down the suspect, but their efforts were also fruitless.