Zainab’s rapist, murderer Imran Ali hanged at Kot Lakhpat Jail

by Tauqeer Abbas
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Imran Ali, who was convicted for the rape and murder of six-year-old Zainab Amin in Kasur earlier this year, was hanged to death in the early hours of Wednesday in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Central Jail.

According to GeoNews, Ali was executed in the presence of both Magistrate Adil Sarwar and the deceased’s father, Muhammad Amin, both of whom arrived early morning at the Kot Lakhpat Jail.

An ambulance had also arrived at the scene, accompanied by a brother of the convict as well as two of his friends.

After the execution, Ali’s family — accompanied by police contingents — took his body to Kasur.

Zainab’s rape and murder ─ the 12th such incident to occur within a 10 kilometre radius in Kasur in one year ─ had sparked outrage and protests across the country following the recovery of the child’s body from a trash heap a week after she went missing.

The heinous nature of the crime had seen immediate riots break out in Kasur — in which two people were killed — while #JusticeforZainab became a rallying cry for an end to violence against children.

Zainab had gone to a religious tuition centre near her house in the Road Kot area on Jan 4 from where she is believed to have been abducted. Her parents had been in Saudi Arabia performing Umrah, according to her family, and she had been living with a maternal aunt.

Soon after her abduction, her panicked family had received footage showing her walking with a stranger near Peerowala Road. On Jan 9, a police constable deputed to trace the girl recovered her body from a heap of trash near the Shahbaz Khan Road.

Police had said the girl seemed to have been killed four or five days earlier.

Prime suspect
A first information report had been registered against the disappearance of the girl on Jan 5, with the victim’s paternal uncle as the complainant in the case. Murder charges were added to the FIR on Jan 9, after the victim’s body was recovered.

Police had confirmed on Jan 13 that the results of DNA testing of samples collected from the crime scenes pointed towards the involvement of one culprit in at least seven similar cases in the district.

Read more: ‘Why is DNA evidence not given weight in Pakistani courts?’

The Punjab government had declared the arrest of Ali, the prime suspect, on January 23 after a widespread manhunt.

The ATC had on Feb 17, 2018, handed down death sentence on four counts to the 24-year-old convict, following a four-day jail trial at Kot Lakhpat Jail.

The death penalty was handed down under four sections of laws including 364-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) (kidnapping a person under the age of fourteen), 376 of the PPC (rape), 302-B of the PPC (murder) and section 7 of Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 (for terrorising society by an act).

The court had further awarded life imprisonment to the convict under section 377 of PPC (unnatural offence/sodomy) and seven-year jail term under section 201 of PPC (dumping the dead body). The court had also imposed a fine of Rs1 million on the convict to be paid to the legal heirs of the victim, in addition to a collective fine of Rs3.2m imposed under different sections of law.

Since then, Ali has been indicted and sentenced to death in the rape and murder cases of at least six other minor girls.

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