Police on Monday arrested a man after footage showing him allegedly molesting a minor girl in Punjab’s Kasur district went viral online.

According to Kasur District Police Officer (DPO) Muhammad Isa Khan, the suspect was arrested in an injured condition.

“The suspect had molested a little girl playing in a street in Shah Inayat Colony three days ago,” the statement said.

DPO Khan took notice of the footage and directed Station House Officer Asif Javed to arrest the suspect within 24 hours, it added.

The police said that the suspect was caught at Dhanpat Road where he pulled out a pistol to escape arrest. However, he was shot during a firing exchange and was arrested in an injured condition, the statement said.

It added that the suspect had been taken to the Kasur District Hospital for treatment.

“According to the vision of the Punjab chief minister, sexual abuse of women and innocent children will not be tolerated under any circumstances,” the statement said.

As many as 3,364 child abuse cases were reported from across the country last year, according to a civil society report. The report Cruel Numbers 2024 by Sahil was prepared based on data collected from 81 national and regional newspapers across the country.

“The objective of the report is to present the data on the situation regarding violence against children (up to 18 years) in cases of sexual abuse, abduction/kidnapping, missing children, and child marriages,” the report stated.

In January of 2018, police recovered the body of six-year-old Zainab Amin from a heap of trash in Kasur, five days after she went missing. A postmortem examination suggested that she may have been raped before she was strangled to death.

The case sparked outrage across the nation and forced the government into action in finding the serial rapist and killer.

The culprit, identified as Imran Ali, was convicted of the rape and murder case and sentenced to death. He was hanged to death in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Central Jail on Oct 17, 2018.

The heinous nature of the crime had seen immediate riots break out in Kasur — in which two people were killed — while #JusticeforZainab became a rallying cry for an end to violence against children.

More than two years after the Zainab case, the National Assembly passed the Zainab Alert, Response and Recovery Bill, 2019 that seeks to expedite investigation and punishment for perpetrators of child abuse.