Serial paedophile killer gets death on three counts

LAHORE: An anti-terrorism court Tuesday awarded death sentence on three counts along with life imprisonment to serial paedophile killer Sohail Shahzad over the charges of kidnapping, sodomy, murder and terrorising. The convict Sohail Shahzad had abducted, sodomised and murdered a minor Ali Hasnain, a resident of Chunian. The anti-terrorism court judge Aijaz Ahmad Buttar in his judgment directed convict to pay Rs3.2 million as compensation to legal heirs of the victim.

Earlier in December 2019, the court had convicted Shahzad over the charges of murdering and sodomising a minor Faizan alias Mithu of the same locality.

The state prosecutor Mian Tufail while talking to The News informed that Shahzad has been awarded death on three counts along with life imprisonment.

It is pertinent to mention that the convict is also facing two more cases over the same charges. In these two cases, Shahzad had allegedly murdered minors including Muhammad Imran and Suleman Akram.

As per case details, Shahzad was arrested by police on October 1, 2019 over the charges of rape and murder of four minors in Chunian. Four children aged between eight and 12 years had gone missing since June 2019. The remains of three of them were found on September 17 from sand dunes near Chunian Bypass. On November 9, 2019, Faizan was abducted and his body was recovered on November 17. On the same day police and team of Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PSFA) found the clothes of Faizan and other boy Ali Hasnain. The experts of PFSA on November 19 found an unknown DNA on clothes of Faizan and Ali.

In October it found that clothes of Faizan and Ali are carrying a DNA of same suspect, later which matched with the DNA of Sohail Shahzad. During spot inspection, PFSA team captured shoe prints photos, then police crime scene team collected shoe moulds, the same shoes have been recovered from the convict after his arrest and the same shoes worn by the convict sent to PFSA, which matched.

In 2011, Shahzad was booked in a sodomy case and awarded five-year imprisonment by a local court. Later, he allegedly pressurised the victim’s family to reconcile and was released from jail after one-and-a-half years.