Girl’s death in hotel: ‘Walk-through gates were dysfunctional'

LAHORE: The girl who was found shot dead in the washroom of a five-star hotel on The Mall had managed to take a pistol into the hotel because its walk-through gates were not working.

This was stated by a senior police official on condition of anonymity while quoting the hotel’s security guards. He said the five-star hotel was not following the security standard operating procedures (SOPs) issued by the law enforcement agencies.

Rabia Naseer, 22, of Batapur, was found shot dead in the hotel on Friday.

About 15 security guards and other employees of the hotel, who were interrogated by the police, stated that they did not frisk Rabia when she entered the hotel. They only checked the purse which was empty.

Police are still clueless about the motive behind the killing of Rabia.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Investigation Hassan Mushtaq Sukhera said they were still waiting for the forensic and calls record data reports. A murder case against unidentified person(s) was registered on complaint of Rabia’s father Atta Muhammad.

According to police high-ups, Rabia’s family, including her father and four brothers, were initially reluctant to go for the postmortem and they had also denied lodging the case. But the case was later registered on the intervention of the police.

There were reports that Rabia was a fourth-year student at Kinnaird College and was also coaching the college’s cricket team. But the college administration denied the girl was their student or hired for coaching their cricket team.

The CCTV camera footages aired by TV channels showed that Rabia was continuously talking to someone on phone when she was crossing the lobby of the hotel to go to washroom.