ATC awards life term in Asma rape and murder case

MARDAN: The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) here on Monday awarded life imprisonment to the accused involved in sexual assault on a four-year old girl Asma and later killing her in Gujjar Garhi.

It may be mentioned that Asma went missing on January 13 from her home in Gujjar Garhi. Later her body was recovered from the sugarcane fields and the local police registered a case against unidentified accused.

Himayatullah Mayar, who was district nazim at that time, had said that the minor girl was sexually abused but the police was trying to hush up the case.The post-mortem report confirmed that the girl was raped before being strangled to death.

The district government had also called an All Parties Conference on the matter to press the police to include rape and terrorism clauses in the first information report (FIR). The police obliged after the public pressure mounted.

Following the FIR, the police had arrested over 200 people from the surrounding areas. The police took blood samples of some of the suspected persons and sent them to the forensic laboratory in Lahore.

The DNA of one accused Mohammad Nabi, a relative of the girl, had matched the sample collected from her.The police had arrested the accused and produced him in court on February 11. The accused had confessed to his crime before the court. Later, the proceedings of the case were started and these continued for more than four months.

On Monday, ATC Judge Younas Khan awarded life term to Mohammad Nabi and fined him Rs1 million.Talking to reporters, Syed Inayat Shah Bacha, counsel for the plaintiff, said that the accused was under 18 years age and due to this reason the court did not award death sentence to him.