LAHORE: The 24-year-old serial killer of Kasur, Imran Ali, on Tuesday filed an appeal in the Lahore High Court challenging his conviction in rape-cum-murder case of Zainab.

The appeal filed through the Kot Lakhpat Central Jail superintendent is called “jail-appeal”, normally moved by convicts who would not be able to engage private counsel to defend them.

The jail appeal is mandatory to meet legal requirements for the confirmation of death penalty of a condemned prisoner by the high court.

An anti-terrorism court had on Feb 17 awarded death sentence on four counts to Ali following a four-day jail trial conducted in the Central Jail. The convict was also separately given life imprisonment and a seven-year jail term in addition to the death penalty.

A two-judge bench of the high court will soon take up the jail-appeal of the convict along with a murder-reference to be forwarded by the trial court with a request to confirm the death sentence so that the execution could be carried out.

A trial court has to send the reference within seven days after the announcement of the verdict.

“Kindly find enclosed herewith jail appeal along with an attested copy of the judgment of unconfirmed condemned prisoner cited as subject for kind perusal of the Honorable Court,” said the jail superintendent in a covering letter addressed to the deputy registrar (judicial) of the LHC.

It is to be mentioned that the trial court had handed down the punishment on the basis of forensic, material and circumstantial evidences presented by the prosecution in addition to the confession made by the convict.

The convict had initially denied the charges against him and opted to contest the trial, however, he pleaded guilty the next day. The court had provided him with a state counsel after his private counsel refused to further defend him following the confession.

The trial of the convict in other eight identical cases of rape-cum-murder of minor girls of Kasur is yet to commence.

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2018