Pak court upholds death sentence of convict in minor’s murder

A Pakistani court has upheld the death sentence of a man convicted in the brutal rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl that shook the entire nation and sparked outrage. In the first ever trial in the country's history that concluded in shortest period of four days, an antiterrorism court last month sentenced to death 23-year-old Imran Ali on four grounds -- murdering a child, kidnapping a child, rape of a minor, and committing an unnatural act with a minor.

The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday upheld the verdict of the anti-terrorism court that awarded death sentence to Ali.

Ali was arrested in January, two weeks after he raped and killed the 7year-old girl and threw her body into a garbage dump in Kasur city, some 50 kilometres from Lahore.

The brutal rape and murder of the child had sparked outrage and protests across the country. Her case was the twelfth such incident to occur within a 10 kilometre radius in Kasur city over a 12-month period.

The arrest brought to light seven more such crimes and many Pakistanis have demanded he be publicly executed.A division bench of the LHC comprising Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan and Justice Shehram Sarwar Chaudhry dismissed Ali's appeal against his conviction after hearing arguments from the prosecution and the defence counsel.

The convict's lawyer advocate Asad Jamal questioned the admissibility of the DNA findings which the trial court had relied on when handing down the sentence.