A sessions court in Rawalpindi on Wednesday sentenced a young man to death for subjecting his two minor nieces to rape and sexual abuse over the course of several months.

The convict, Iftikhar Ali, the brother of Pashto singer Nazia Iqbal, was arrested in April last year over allegations he had sexually assaulted two of his sister's minor daughters.

After evidence and testimonies recorded proved the crime, Additional District and Sessions Judge Tahir Alam sentenced Ali to death and also imposed a fine of Rs0.6 million on him.

After his arrest, a case was registered against the convict under Section 376 (punishment of rape) and Section 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) at the Rawat police station.

Police had said at the time that the convict, who was then 19 years old, was reportedly caught red-handed by Iqbal while sexually abusing her daughter at her residence in Bahria Town, Rawalpindi.

In her statement before the police, the singer had stated that she was a mother of two sons and two daughters. The girls were 12 and eight years of age (at the time of the incident). Due to professional commitments, both she and her husband would mostly be away from home due to which she had called over her brother from Swat to look after the girls and ensure the safety of the home.

Iqbal had revealed that her daughters "would often complain to her that their uncle indulged in 'wrong acts' with them and would show them scary movies, threatening to kill them if they told anyone".

"One Sunday morning when I got up to prepare breakfast, I heard the cries of my younger daughter coming from the adjacent room. Upon entering the room, I discovered that her clothes had been taken off and my brother was sexually abusing her," she told police in April 2018.

Upon seeing this, she had immediately cried out in alarm following which the convict fled the scene. He was subsequently arrested and charged.

Then-station house officer Rawat Inspector Sheikh Khizr Hayat had said that Ali had confessed that he was unemployed and mostly remained at home and would often indulge in immoral acts with his nieces.