ISLAMABAD: The father of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari has accused the government of trying to ignore the fact that a man accused of raping and killing his daughter is part of an international pornography ring in the Kasur district of Punjab.
The dead girl’s father Mohammed Amin Ansari told Arab News that the government is trying to push the matter under the rug, trying to present Imran Ali as a lone wolf. Ali is currently in police custody.
“Ali is not alone in this crime,” he said in a telephone interview. “Our investigations in the area reveal he is part of a pornographic ring who sexually assault children, shoot them and sell the videos in international market.”
Ansari accused the Punjab government of hiding the details and presenting the accused as a “lone wolf for face-saving or to protect some vested interests.”
But Punjab government spokesperson Malik Ahmad Khan told Arab News that “the investigators have so far not found any link of Imran with any child pornographic ring.”
“Imran is a lone wolf in the case, but investigations are still under way,” he said.
Zainab’s body was found in a garbage dump on Jan. 9, five days after she was snatched on her way to a Qur’an class near her home in Kasur. The incident stirred outrage across Pakistan and there have been calls for her killer to be publicly hanged.
Imran Ali, the key suspect in the case, was arrested on Jan. 20.
Zainab is believed to be the 12th child raped and killed in the past year in the Kasur area. The city has a long history of pedophile scandals. In August 2015, it was reported that 280 children were forced to have sex and around 400 videos of them were recovered.
The Punjab government described the case as a “land dispute” between two parties registering fake cases of sexual abuse of their children with the police.
On Thursday, Pakistan’s Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar summoned well-known TV journalist Shahid Masood, after he alleged on air in his program that Imran Ali belonged to a gang supplying pornographic videos of children internationally.