A Peshawar child protection court on Monday sentenced a suspect to death and life imprisonment over charges of rape and serial killing carried out in July 2022.

In 2022, police had arrested a man in Peshawar on charges of sexually assaulting three minor girls and killing two of them.

Former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa inspector general of police (IG) Moazzam Jah Ansari had told reporters that the 20-year-old embroiderer had confessed to sexual assaults and murders. The suspect was declared a serial killer by the police, who also said that he sexually assaulted the girls before killing them and dumping the bodies.

In a press release today, KP police said that the province’s “first serial killer and rapist was sentenced to death and life imprisonment through an excellent police investigation”.

“The suspect — involved in the July 2022 rape and serial killing cases — was sentenced to death five times by the child protection court,” the statement added.

KP IG Zulfiqar Hameed congratulated the joint investigation and operations team for conducting an excellent and coordinated investigation, preparing a case based on digital, forensic and other evidence and getting the accused convicted by the court, the statement said.

He also announced cash prizes and commendation certificates to the team, it added.

The statement detailed the suspect’s crimes and said that the “tragic incidents of rape and murder of three innocent girls” in 2022, had created fear and panic in the area, adding the case had remained unsolved for the police.

Former senior superintendent of police (SSP) Operations Kashif Aftab Abbasi and SSP Investigation Shahzada Kokab Farooq had formed special operations and investigation teams comprising police, scientific experts and forensic experts, it said.

The statement added that the team had examined all aspects of the cases, including call data records, geo-fencing, forensics, and digital material such as 3,000 minutes of camera recordings, using traditional and non-traditional methods.

The team arrested the suspect based on the data, the statement said, adding that the suspect’s semen sample matched with the samples found on the bodies of the victims, revealing that he was the “heinous person who committed the atrocities”.

“The police presented the accused in court after building a strong case containing all the evidence, where the suspect confessed to his heinous crime before the court,” it said, adding that the case was prosecuted by Deputy Public Prosecutor Arif Bilal.

“Police investigation plays a key role in delivering justice through the courts. In the face of indelible evidence, no accused can escape punishment,” IG Hameed was quoted as saying in the statement.

This case was a testament to the investigative skills of the officers of the KP Police, he added.

Despite the presence of anti-rape laws — with punishment for rape either resulting in the death penalty or imprisonment of between 10 and 25 years — cases continue to prevail in the country.

Earlier this month, a prayer leader was booked for allegedly sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy inside a mosque in KP’s Charsadda district.