Punjab Prime Minister Usman Buzdar announced on Tuesday that the serial killer was identified behind the murders of four minor children in the Kasur district.
At a press conference in Lahore, the prime minister said Suhail Shehzad, 27, had been identified by polygraphic and DNA tests.
The suspect has been arrested and is expected to be brought before an antiterrorist court in Lahore tomorrow.
"A geographic fence was made for 1,649 suspects and 1,543 DNA samples were analyzed," Buzdar said, revealing details of the police investigation conducted to discover the identity of the suspect. He said the semen in one child's clothes and the blood in another's clothes matched the suspect's samples.
The prime minister confirmed that the suspect was behind the four cases of sodomy and murder that shook Kasur last month and shed new light on the continued prevalence of child sexual abuse in the country. "The case against him will be carried out in an anti-terrorism court where hearings will be held daily," he said.
"I have instructed the attorney general to monitor the case," Buzdar said, adding that he will also follow it closely. "I assure the families of the victims that they will obtain justice."
According to the Punjab police inspector general, the suspect is a resident of the city of Rana in Chunian, the tehsil where the remains of the children were discovered, and committed the crimes in June, August and September.
This is not the first time that Shehzad has been accused of rape. A senior police officer said Dawn that Shehzad had been working as a car rickshaw driver for many years and that he was convicted of rape many years ago. He was arrested for the first time in 2011 for raping a five-year-old boy from Rana Town and was found guilty of the charge during the court trial.
A case (36/11) had been registered against him at a local police station, the police officer said.
The suspect had changed his profession after completing his sentence and began working in a tandoor In Chunian, he said and added that the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) obtained a criminal record of defendants residing in Chunian and other adjacent police areas and obtained their DNA samples.
Four children, aged 8 to 12, had disappeared since June of this year and the last, Faizan, aged 8, disappeared the night of September 16.
The remains of three of them were found on September 17 in the sand dunes near the Chunian bridge.
Prime Minister Buzdar had taken note of the incident and requested a report from the Punjab police chief.
Meanwhile, protests were held to express concern about the illegality and failure of the police to protect people's lives.
In recent years, Kasur has been shaken by multiple incidents of abuse, rape and murder of children. In January 2018, Zainab Ansari, six, was found dead in a pile of garbage near Shahbaz Khan Road, five days after her disappearance. It was the twelfth incident of this type that occurred within a 10-kilometer radius in Kasur for a period of 12 months. His death had caused protests and outrage throughout the country.
The first suspect, Imran Ali, had been arrested on January 23, 2018 and on June 12 the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against the death sentence, noting that he had admitted to committing similar crimes with eight other minor victims. Ali was subsequently executed in October of last year.
In 2015, the Hussain Khanwala village of Kasur attracted worldwide attention when a child pornography ring was stopped. Hundreds of video clips have emerged showing a gang forcing dozens of younger children to perform sexual acts and film them. The gang also used the videos to blackmail the children's families and extorted millions of cash and jewelry.
Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1508398/punjab-cm-announces-arrest-of-serial-killer-behind-murders-of-minor-boys-in-kasur