Zainab Ansari was a six-year-old Pakistani girl who was abducted on her way to a Quran recital on 4 January 2018. Her body was discovered discarded upon a garbage disposal site close to the city ofLahore on 9 January. The child had been raped and strangled. Her murderer, 24-year-old Imran Ali, was determined to be a serial killer responsible for at least seven previous murders of prepubescent girls. Ansari's murder incited widespread protests and outrage in Kasur, Punjab, Pakistan. Her murder ultimately led to the passage of Pakistan's first national child abuse law, known as the Zainab Alert Bill, which directs that any individual found guilty of child abuse faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. This bill also stipulates instigating legal action against any police officials who cause any unnecessary delay in investigating such cases within two hours of a child being reported missing.
Event
The incident happened when Zainab's parents had gone to Saudi Arabia for performing Umrah and Zainab was temporarily living with her uncle. On 4 January 2018, while going to a Quran tuition class which was very close to her house, she went missing. Her uncle, Muhammad Adnan, lodged a complaint with the Kasur DistrictPolice Office. CCTV video footage, which was discovered by Ansari's family members with no help from the authorities, shows her accompanied by an unknown bearded man in white clothes and a jacket, holding her by the hand and walking on Peerowala Road in Kasur. Her body was later found in a garbage heap in Shahbaz Khan Road on 9 January 2018. After an autopsy, it was confirmed that she had been raped and strangled to death. The autopsy suggested that she endured captivity and torture before her murder.
Protests
There were large protests in Kasur and other major cities of Pakistan. During clashes with the police, two people were killed after they broke into a police station. Four policemen who allegedly opened fire at protesters " been arrested and being interrogated."
announced the arrest of a suspect, Imran Ali, in a press conference on 23 January 2018. He confirmed that polygraph test and the DNA of the suspect matched with the samples with least eight minor girls, including Zainab, who were raped and murdered in within the same neighbourhood and that the suspect is a serial killer. Imran Ali was a 24-year-old mechanic who lived in Zainab's neighbourhood. He had even taken part in protests against Zainab's murder. Imran Ali confessed to his crimes. Police also found the jacket worn by the suspect, which was seen on CCTV while he was taking Zainab with him.
Sentencing
On 17 February 2018, an anti-terrorism court in Lahore Central Jail found Imran Ali guilty of raping and murdering Zainab Ansari. The court handed him four counts of the death penalty, one life term, a seven-year jail term and Rs. 3.2 million in fines. He was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Zainab and twelve other underage girls, and was executed in the early morning of October 17, 2018, at Lahore's Kot Lakhpat jail. The black warrant for Imran's execution was carried out at 5:30 am in accordance with the prevailing law on capital punishment.
Zainab Alert Bill
In 2020, the Parliament of Pakistan passed the Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Act, also known as the Zainab Alert Bill, named after Zainab Ansari. The bill outlines systems designed to improve the country's responses to missing child cases.
