Child pornography case: Court awards death on three counts to culprit

RAWALPINDI: Additional District and Sessions Judge Jahangir Ali Gondal has awarded death sentence on three counts and life imprisonment on three counts to Sohail Ayaz in a child pornography case. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 500,000 on him. The court awarded 7 years rigorous imprisonment to Khurram Shahzad who was also involved in the case. Sohail Ayaz, the main accused, had confessed to abducting and sexually assaulting dozens of children. Sohail, former consultant for a Planning and Development Department project in KP, is in the Adiala Jail. He had been found involved in over 30 child pornography and sexual abuse cases. On November 12, 2019, the Rawalpindi police had arrested Sohail on charges of abducting and sexually assaulting over 30 children in different cities, only to discover that he was a convicted paedophile deported from the UK and Italy after spending four years in jail there. In his confessional statement, he confessed that he had raped over 30 children and uploaded videos of the assaults to the dark web. According to the police, 45-year-old Sohail Ayaz is a chartered accountant and an expert in the dark web. He lived in the Nilour area of Islamabad and was earning around Rs 300,000 per month for providing consultancy services to the KP Public Secretariat Planning Department. The services of Sohail were terminated immediately following his arrest in Rawalpindi for child pornography and sexual abuse. Sohail was also working with the Save the Children organisation. He was arrested in London in 2009 at the charity’s headquarters after thousands of child porn images were discovered at his home.