Imran Ali, who was sentenced to death in Kasur earlier this year for the rape and murder of Zainab Ansari and 12 other minors, was hanged to death in the early hours of Wednesday (October 17, 2018) in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail.
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Imran Ali, who raped and murdered four-year-old girl Zainab Ansari in Kasur, was hanged on October 17. |
Zainab Ansari(Urdu: زینب انصاری) was a 6-year-old Pakistani girl who was on her way to Quran recital when she was abducted and later found raped and murdered which incited protests and outrage in Kasur, Punjab, Pakistan.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Zainab_Ansari
Event
The incident happened, when Zainab's parents had gone to Saudi Arabia for performing Umrah and Zainab was living with her uncle. On 4 January 2018, while going to a Quran tuition class which was very close to her house, she went missing. Her uncle, Muhammad Adnan, lodged a complaint with the Kasur District Police Office. CCTV video footage which was discovered by Ansari's family members, with no help from the authorities involved, shows her accompanied by an unknown bearded man in white clothes and a jacket, holding her by the hand and walking on Peerowala Road in Kasur. Her body was later found in a garbage heap in Shahbaz Khan Road on 9 January 2018. After an autopsy, it was confirmed that she had been raped and strangled to death. The autopsy suggested that she endured captivity and torture before her murder.
Protest
There were large protests in Kasur and other major cities of Pakistan, during the clash with the police, two people were killed after they broke into a police station. Four policemen who allegedly opened fire at protesters "[had] been arrested and being interrogated."
Reaction
Punjab chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif said:
Deeply pained about brutal murder of an 8-year-old girl in a child molestation case. Those societies that cannot protect its children are eternally condemned. Not going to rest till the perpetrators of this dastardly act are apprehended & given severest possible punishment under the law.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai wrote on Twitter, "This has to stop. [Government] and the concerned authorities must take action."Imran Khan, the leader of PTI and a former cricketer, tweeted, "The condemnable & horrific rape & murder of little Zainab exposes once again how vulnerable our children are in our society."
Cleric Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, a political rival of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, "demanded the local government be replaced, saying it has 'no right to remain in power after the killing of Zainab Ansari'".
Kiran Naz, a news anchor on Pakistan's Samaa TV, hosted a January 10 bulletin with her young daughter on her lap as an act of protest. At the Sindh Assembly, artist celebrities Ayesha Omer, Nadia Hussain, Faysal Qureshi and others met on January 12 with Deputy Speaker Shehla Raza, demanding laws and justice to prevent such tragedies in the future. Mahira Khan, Ali Zafar, Imran Abbas, Mawra Hocane, Saba Qamar as well as former cricket players Wasim Akram and Shoaib Akhtar tweeted about the incident, condemning the brutal rape and murder, while also trending the hashtag #JusticeforZainab.
Arrest
Shahbaz Sharif announced the arrest of a suspect, Imran Ali, in a press conference on 23 January 2018. He confirmed that the DNA and polygraphtest of the suspect that matched with the samples with least eight minor girls, including Zainab, raped and murdered in within the same neighbourhood and that the suspect is a serial killer. Imran Ali is a 24-year-old mechanic who lived in Zainab's neighbourhood. He had even taken part in protests against Zainab's murder. Imran Ali has confessed to his crimes. Police also found the jacket worn by the suspect seen on CCTV which was seen while he was taking Zainab with him.
Sentencing
On 17 February 2018, an anti-terrorism court in Lahore Central Jail, found Imran Ali guilty of raping and murdering Zainab Ansari. The court handed him four counts of the death penalty, one life term, a seven-year jail term and Rs. 3.2 million in fines. He was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Zainab and twelve other underage girls, and was executed on the early morning of Wednesday 17 October 2018 at Lahore's Kot Lakhpat jail.
The black warrant for Imran's execution was carried out at 5:30am in accordance with the prevailing law on capital punishment.
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Imran Ali, who raped and murdered four-year-old girl Zainab Ansari in Kasur, will be hanged on October 17. |
Pakistan Zainab murder: Imran Ali hanged for six-year-old's death
Pakistan has hanged a man convicted for the rape and murder of six-year-old Zainab Ansari in January.
Imran Ali, who was arrested after her body was found in a garbage dump, was executed in Lahore's Kot Lakhpat prison early on Wednesday, police said.
Zainab's father and other relatives were present.
The case, the most heinous in a string of similar child murders in the city of Kasur, had sparked outrage and protests in the country.
After he was sentenced to death for raping and murdering Zainab, Imran Ali was convicted for similar crimes against six more girls.
Zainab's father, Amin Ansari, said after the execution that he was "satisfied".
"I have seen his awe-inspiring end with my own eyes," he told reporters.
However Mr Ansari, who said that Zainab would have been seven years and two months old if she was alive, expressed regret that authorities did not televise the hanging.
Mr Ansari's earlier appeal for Ali to face a public hanging was dismissed by the Lahore High court.
#JusticeforZainab
Zainab disappeared on 4 January and her body was found five days later in a rubbish dump.
Police said there had been several similar child murders in the past two years in Kasur but her killing proved to be a tipping point.
It triggered widespread outrage, including protests complaining of police incompetence. Two people were killed in clashes.
Zainab's family said the police did not take action during the five days from when she was reported missing until her body was found. Relatives, not police, recovered CCTV footage of her last movements.
The footage, which showed a girl being led away by a man, was circulated widely on social media. The hashtag #JusticeForZainab later went viral, with many Pakistanis calling for action.
On 23 January, 24-year-old Imran Ali was arrested through a DNA match. He was sentenced to death in February for Zainab's rape and murder.
His appeals against the verdict failed and earlier this month President Arif Alvi rejected a plea for clemency.
M Ilyas Khan, BBC News, Islamabad
The hanging of Zainab's killer has brought back memories of that horrible episode in January which sent shockwaves across the country and triggered widespread protests.
Without such a public reaction, and the fact that it was Zainab's family and not the police that recovered the crucial CCTV footage which would ultimately lead to the arrest of her killer, few expected the police to investigate the case seriously.
This is because child abuse attracts little attention in Pakistan even though it remains a recurrent phenomenon.
Statistics gathered by a child rights NGO, Sahil, show that as many as 2,300 cases of crimes against children were reported during the first six months of the current year alone. In 57 of these cases, children were killed after being raped.
Zainab's case is unique in the sense that it triggered a public debate on the issue. The government of the time, under public pressure, promised tough action in terms of police training and legislation.
But now that Zainab's tormentor has gone to the gallows, one is reminded of the sad reality that not much was ever done after those initial statements of intent.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45885686
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Killed: Zainab Ansari, six, was raped and murdered after being kidnapped on her way to Koran school in Kasur, Pakistan, in January |
Pakistan hangs man who raped and murdered a six-year-old girl before dumping her body on a pile of rubbish, in case that shocked the country and sparked riots
· Zainab, six, was raped and murdered in Kasur, Pakistan, in January this year
· Imran Ali, 24, confessed to killing her and four other girls in the city
· Ali has today been executed through hanging at a prison in Pakistan
By Afp
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A Pakistani man convicted of raping and murdering a six-year-old girl, whose death shocked the country and sparked riots earlier this year, has been executed.
Zainab Fatima Ameen was snatched off the street in Kasur, eastern Pakistan, and her remains found five days later dumped on a rubbish heap.
The DNA of Imran Ali, 24, was found on her body, and after confessing to killing Zainab and four seven-year-old girls, he was handed four separate death sentences.
'He was hanged this morning in the presence of a prison official and the father of the victim,'an official at Lahore's central prison, where the convict was executed, told AFP.
'His dead body was handed over to his family who took it away for burial,' he said.
Zainab's father, Mohammed Amin Ansari, was allowed to witness the execution, and thanked the judiciary, government and investigators for delivering speedy justice.
Mr Ansari had demanded that Imran should be hanged at some public place in order to deter others, but the judges rejected his plea this week.
'My daughter will not come back, but I am satisfied that we got justice,' he said.
The six-year-old girl was snatched by Ali as she walked to a Koran class in January this year, with CCTV footage showing him leading her down a street by the hand.
Five days later, she was found raped and strangled on a rubbish pile about a mile from her home.
Zainab's death sparked outrage across Pakistan, with violence erupting in Kasur as thousands swarmed police stations and set fire to politicians' homes, while Pakistanis across the country took to social media demanding action.
Ali was caught after his DNA was found on Zainab's body - the same as had been recovered from six other murdered girls found in rubbish dumps or abandoned houses in the same area.
At least 12 cases of rape and murder have been recorded in the Kasur area in the past two years. Ali confessed to eight of these, but four remain unsolved.
Prior to the recent flood of cases, Kasur was already infamous for sexual abuse, after authorities uncovered a huge paedophile ring in the city in 2015.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6284973/Pakistan-hangs-child-killer-death-sparked-riots.html
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Imran Ali (left), who raped and murdered four-year-old girl Zainab Ansari (right) in Kasur, was hanged on October 17. |
OTHER LINKS:
Pakistan Court Hands Down Four Death Sentences to Child Killer February 17, 2018 8:59 AM Ayaz Gul
FILE - A slide showing a picture of Imran Ali, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari, is shown at a press conference in Lahore, Pakistan January 23, 2018.
Pakistan: Zainab Ansari's Confessed Killer Sentenced To Death
February 17, 201811:08 AM ET
PHOTO: Mohammed Amin shows a picture of his 7-year-old daughter, Zainab Ansari, in Kasur, Pakistan, on Jan. 18. On Saturday, a 24-year-old local man, found guilty in her murder, was sentenced to die.
B.K. Bangash/AP
Pakistan: Zainab Ansari's killer gets four death sentences 17 February 2018
A court in Pakistan has given a 24-year-old man, Imran Ali, four death sentences for raping and murdering a six-year old girl last month.