Lahore: Police on Tuesday arrested an alleged serial killer, who murdered four boys in Pakistan’s Punjab province after assaulting them sexually. Addressing a press conference, Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar said said the suspect was identified using poly-graphic and DNA testing.
The serial killer, identified as 27-year-old Sohail Shahzad, has been arrested, he said. Protests broke out last month in Chunian area of Kasur district, some 50 km from Lahore, after police failed to arrest the killer of four boys that sparked a national outrage over the rampant prevalence of child abuse in Pakistan.
Buzdar confirmed that Shahzad was behind all the four cases of sodomy and murder, which had shaken Kasur last month. “Geo-fencing for 1,649 suspects was done and DNA samples of 1,543 were tested. Semen on the clothes of one boy and blood on the clothes of another matched with samples of Shahzad,” the chief minister said, adding that the suspect will be tried in the anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Lahore and the court will be requested to complete the trial at the earliest.
He said Shahzad was a neighbour of the victims. In the last few years, multiple incidents of abuse, rape and killing of children rocked Kasur. In January 2018, six-year-old Zainab Ansari was found dead in a trash heap near Shahbaz Khan Road, five days after she went missing. Her death had sparked nationwide protests and outrage. Serial killer Imran Ali, 23, was arrested in the same month in the case, in a shortest ever trial of four days in the country’s history, and was sentenced to death. He was executed in October last year. Ali confessed to have killed eight minor girls after raping them. In 2015, Kasur’s Hussain Khanwala village had attracted worldwide attention when a child pornography ring was busted.
Hundreds of video clips had emerged showing a gang forcing dozens of boys and girls to perform sexual acts and filming them. The gang had also used the videos to blackmail families of the children and extorted millions in cash and jewellery from them. Police arrested several members of the gang, however, most of them got acquittal due to lack of evidence.