New Delhi: 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 in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail.
This past Tuesday, a Pakistani court dismissed a petition for his public hanging. In his plea, Amin Ansari, father of Zainab, the seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered by the convict, requested that the convict be hanged publicly under Section 22 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, which allows the government to specify the manner, mode and place of execution of any sentence passed under this Act. Talking to the media after the execution, Ansari said he regretted that the authorities had not allowed a live telecast of the hanging, reports Dawn.
Also Read: The Worrying Trend of Violent Crimes Against Children in Pakistan’s Kasur
Express Tribune reported that the black warrant for Imran’s execution was carried out at 5:30 am in accordance with the prevailing law on capital punishment.
The serial killer of Kasur
The anger over the burgeoning cases of child sexual abuse and sexual assault of minors in Kasur, after an alleged paedophile ring linked to a prominent local family was discovered, reached a crescendo with the rape and murder of Zainab Ansari, an eight-year-old, who was abducted on January 4 and found murdered by the police on January 9. The incident triggered violent protests in Kasur against police negligence and incompetence, and two people were killed after the police opened fire on protestors.
Soon after, Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab province, announced that the police had arrested Imran Ali, a suspected serial killer and one of Zainab’s neighbours, and matched his DNA to the evidence.
Also Read: When the Murder and Rape of Zainab Shook the Conscience of Pakistan
In February 2018, Ali was sentenced to death by an Anti-Terrorism Court which gave him four counts of the death penalty, one life term and a seven-year jail term. It was the first ever trial in the country’s history that concluded in shortest period of four days. In March, the Lahore high court upheld the trial court’s conviction and in June, the Supreme Court rejected Imran Ali’s appeal against conviction.