The mysterious stabbers are still challenging Karachi's security agencies, and on Tuesday attacked a girl in Jauharabad was stabbed in the early hours of the morning as she rode with her brother on a motorcycle, becoming the 16th stabbing victim in three weeks.
Police and eyewitnesses said the 15-year-old girl was on the way home with her brother in Jauharabad when she was stabbed from behind just below her shoulder. The attacker fled from the scene. She was rushed to the nearby private hospital for treatment.
The fresh assault took place after police in the Punjab city of Mandi Bahauddin announcing on Sunday that it had arrested the key suspect in the stabbing attacks in Karachi. Punjab police has refused to transfer the suspect's custody to police in Karachi.
Investigators believed that the stabbings are carried out by a group of attackers, not a single person. Karachi's police chief Mushtaq Meher said in a media briefing on Tuesday that about 40 criminals have so far been arrested and interrogated.
He said 200 police officials and 100 Rangers have been deployed in parts of Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Gulistan-e-Jauhar to deal with the stabbings. The DIG East, Sultan Khwaja, said there is similarity in 13 cases of stabbing. The police have arrested 38 suspects in this connection and data on mentally disturbed patients out on the streets have been collected from three mental hospitals in the Karachi.
At the same time, the police have checked data on 200 sims and over 15,000 calls were also traced. Some days ago police had released CCTV footage of an attacker, in which a young man wearing a helmet is seen approaching a victim and then stabbing her and fleeing from the scene.