Police under pressure to capture child killer

PAKISTAN: Police in Pakistan are hunting a serial child killer after the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl provoked nationwide outrage and rampaging mobs.

Zainab Ansari was last seen leaving her home in the eastern city of Kasur to attend a Koranic study class last week. Her body was found on waste ground on Wednesday. She had been tortured, raped and strangled.

Security camera footage shows her being led away by a man. Police said there had been 12 similar murders in Kasur, east Punjab, in the past two years.

DNA samples and other evidence have linked at least five of the victims to Zainab’s killer. All 13 murders were within a close area, and the victims were boys and girls aged 5 to 11.

Public anger has spilt on to the streets, with violent protests at the apparent incompetence and slow response of the authorities after the murders began in 2015.

At least two people were killed when police fired on protesters in Kasur, further enraging crowds at the spreading demonstrations. Shehbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, sacked the police chief of Kasur and offered a reward of 10 million rupees (NZ$216,000) for information leading to the killer.

Sharif, a contender to replace his brother, Nawaz Sharif, as prime minister in elections in May, has ordered police to make arrests within 24 hours.

Protesters attacked the houses of local politicians in Kasur yesterday, and demonstrations and candlelit vigils were held for Zainab in the provincial capital, Lahore.

An online campaign demanding tougher sentencing for child sex offences, including the death penalty, has gained massive support.

Pakistan’s leading athletes and actors are supporting the #Justiceforzainab campaign on Twitter.

Zainab’s parents, who were in Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage when their daughter disappeared, have returned to identify her body. Anees Ansari, her father, accused the police of being too slow to respond when she was reported missing.

Pakistan’s National Commission on Human Rights claimed that it published a report into widespread child abuse in Kasur two years ago but its findings were ignored.

Children in the region have recently been rescued from gangs dealing in prostitution and pornography.

The commission said that people who had tried to report crimes against children had themselves been prosecuted under antiterrorism legislation. – The Times