An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Lahore on Tuesday sentenced three men to life in prison after finding them guilty in the Kasur child abuse scandal.

The three men — Haseem Amir, Wasim Sindhi, and Aleem Asif — were given the punishment in one of the nine cases police had registered since the child abuse ring was uncovered in 2015.

ATC judge Chaudhry Muhammad Ilyas also imposed a fine of Rs300,000 on each of the three convicts.

Ganda Singhwala police had registered FIR number 219/15 against the three convicts and others on charges of abducting and sexually assaulting 280 children in Kasur. Most victims belonged to Husain Khanwala village.

The accused had also been blackmailing the families of the boys since 2009 and even sold the video clips containing images of the assault. Later, a property dispute brought the issue to the surface.

In 2016, the court had awarded life imprisonment to Haseem Amir — one of the three men sentenced today — and one Faizan Majeed in another case after the prosecution had accused them of sexually assaulting young boys and filming the act to blackmail their families.

At one stage the trial court had deleted Section 7 of Anti-Terrorism Act from the first information reports in some of the cases and referred the trials to the district and sessions court. But the Lahore High Court, on an appeal of the prosecution, set aside the decision and restored the provision of the anti-terrorism law.