Prayer leader sentenced to death for raping minor, three others get life terms

A 12-year-old girl died after she was raped in 2014

HYDERABAD: A court in Badin sentenced on Tuesday a prayer leader to death and three others to life imprisonment after finding them guilty of raping and murdering a minor girl in 2014.

The 12-year-old was raped at a seminary in Khushi Muhammad Arain village in the rural town of Kadhan in April, 2014. She died two days later in a hospital due to excessive bleeding.

Dr Farzana Chalgri, who had examined the victim, testified that the girl had also been strangled in an attempt to choke her to death, which she survived.

The suspects, prayer leader Ghulam Murtaza Shar and three young men, Waseem Arain, Adil Arain and Bilawal Arain, were arrested a few days after the incident. They remained incarcerated on judicial remand.



According to the girl's father, his daughter was learning the Holy Quran at the seminary at the time of the incident. He said that his younger son informed the family that he had heard his sister's cries from a room in the seminary. When the family reached the place, they found the girl unconscious inside a locked room.

An FIR was lodged on the father's complaint at the Kadhan police station, nominating the four suspects. The case was initially heard at an anti-terrorism court in Hyderabad. However, it was later transferred to a Badin district and sessions court, despite the aggrieved family's request against the transfer.

The family later challenged the case's transfer from the ATC in the Sindh High Court, which upheld the transfer.



Talking to the media outside the court on Tuesday, the father thanked the Women's Action Forum Hyderabad chapter and lawyer KB Lutf Ali Laghari for supporting the family in the legal battle. He requested the Sindh government to legislate a law for speedy justice in such cases.