Probe team gets 72 hours to track down culprit behind Zainab rape, murder

LAHORE: The Supreme Court on Sunday gave three days’ time to a joint investigation team formed to probe the rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab in Kasur to complete the investigation and submit a report.

A three-member bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar, was hearing the suo motu case of the Kasur incident at the apex court’s Lahore registry.

At the outset, Regional Police Officer (RPO) Multan Muhammad Idrees, who is heading a joint investigation team constituted to probe the incident, submitted a progress report to the bench.

He informed that Zainab’s  rape and murder was the eighth incident of similar nature that had taken place in Kasur since June 2015. These incidents occurred within the limits of three police stations and DNA test results indicated that one culprit was involved in these cases, he explained.

Several similar incidents had taken place in the same city, what police had done so far to arrest culprits, the chief justice asked.

The incidents took place within the jurisdiction of two police stations, but no one bothered to carry out an inquiry, he observed.

Expressing dissatisfaction over progress in the probe into the rape-murder of the minor girl, a member of the bench remarked the investigators had zeroed in on just one angle of the case. The police could probe the case in multiple traditional ways, he added.

Justice Manzoor Ahmed Malik asked the police to focus on other angles of the case too, reminding them that the DNA testing was not the only way to trace the culprit.

If the police continued the probe in this way, DNA tests of 210 million people will have to be conducted, he said.

The JIT head told the judges that there was some information about the case which he couldn’t tell in the courtroom, prompting the bench to conduct the hearing in camera.

The chief justice summoned the police officer to his chamber for further hearing of the case.

Zainab’s uncle and family members of other minor victims appeared before the court that took up the case on a weekly holiday.

At the previous hearing, the bench had restrained the Lahore High Court from hearing the case and sought the entire record of the grisly rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab.

The chief justice expressed displeasure over police failure to trace the culprit behind the incident, observing that it would be a failure of both the government and the police if the perpetrator was not brought to book.

He said that the entire nation was grieved over the killing of the minor and directed the police to ensure that the culprit responsible for her death would be arrested.

Additional Inspector General of Punjab police Abubakar Khuda Bakhsh informed that over 1,000 suspects had so far been interrogated and DNA tests of around 400 people were carried out, but their results could not match that of the culprit.

Of late, the police released a new CCTV footage showing a man suspected to be the perpetrator, which, they say, can help in connecting the dots to zero in on the culprit.

The CCTV footage shows the suspect walking around the home of the minor victim’s maternal aunt on January 04, the day she had gone missing while going to her aunt’s house.

Zainab was abducted on January 04 from Kasur’s Kot Road area. Five days after her disappearance, she was found raped, dead and buried in a garbage dump on Jan 09.

Earlier, four videos had surfaced showing the minor girl being taken away by the culprit.

Zainab’s rape and murder shattered the entire nation, triggering widespread public outrage with people from all walks of life demanding an exemplary capital punishment for the perpetrator.

Violent protests had erupted in the Kasur city following the incident, resulting in the death of two people in police firing outside DC office.

The incident blew the lid on the horrifying reality of how children in a brutalized society are vulnerable to sexual abuse.