On 4th of January, Zainab Amin, a six-year-old Pakistani, disappeared as she walked to a religious studies class. Few days later, her body was found at a rubbish tip more than a mile away from her home in Kasur, the Punjab province of Pakistan. Police said she had been raped and strangled to death.
Within no time anger at the state’s handling of the investigation erupted into violence. After days of investigations and searching of the culprits, Zainab’s rapist and murderer was arrested.
Many have described the incident as Pakistan's 'Nirbhaya' moment as the nationwide protests that followed Zainab’s rape and murder are akin to the time when the brutal rape and mutilation of a 23-year-old paramedical student rocked India and led to landmark change in laws around women safety.
Addressing a press conference in Lahore, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, formally announced the arrest of a key suspect in the rape and murder case of Zainab Amin.
"Our collective effort has borne fruit and the murderer has been arrested," a triumphant Sharif announced to loud applause from the people who attended the presser.
Seconds later he said: “If law allows, the beast should be hanged at the square.”
This was later followed by the Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Interior Rehman Malik's request that the Senate take up a bill seeking public hanging of those found guilty of kidnapping or raping children under the age of 14.
The bill proposed by the committee, entitled the Criminal Law Amendment Act 2018, seeks to amend the Pakistan Penal Code Act 1860's Section 364-A (kidnapping or abducting a person under the age of 14) so that the punishment for the crime is a public execution.
Section 364-A currently reads: "Whoever kidnaps or abducts any person under the [age of fourteen] in order that such person may be murdered or subjected to grievous hurt... or to the lust of any person [sic] shall be punished with death."
The amendment seeks to add the phrase, "by hanging publicly", after the word "death" in the current legislation, the letter said.
Malik in the letter requested the House take up the bill before the current Senate session ends.
“Zainab's killer should be made an example of by executing him publicly,” he said.
Zainab's suspected murderer and rapist is a 23-year-old man named Imran Ali, Sharif announced.
Imran, according to the Pakistan authorities, is a serial killer based in Kasur, who is accused of raping and murdering six to seven girls over the course of two years.
Comments
0 comment