Pakistani authorities on Wednesday executed a man convicted of raping and murdering a six-year-old girl, an incident earlier this year that shocked the country and had led to riots.
Chilling CCTV footage broadcast on television purportedly showed the young girl – Zainab Fatima Ameen – walking hand-in-hand with an unidentified man, in what may have been her last moments.
Imran Ali, 24, was handed four separate death sentences for the rape and murder, which took place in the eastern city of Kasur in January.
He confessed to eight attacks on children in the city, including five murders, in a spate of violence that terrorised society.
"He was hanged this morning in the presence of a prison official and the father of the victim," an official at Lahore's central prison, where the convict was executed, said.
"His dead body was handed over to his family who took it away for burial," he said.
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Members of Zainab's family wanted Ali to be executed in public – a move rejected by the Lahore High Court on Tuesday.
"I have bit of satisfaction that justice has been delivered but I am not fully satisfied as he was not hanged in public," Zainab's father Ameen Ansari said outside the prison following the execution.
The young girl's murder sparked outrage across Pakistan. In Kasur, thousands swarmed police stations and set fire to politicians' homes, while Pakistanis across the country took to social media to demand action.
At least 12 cases of rape and murder have been recorded in the Kasur area in the past two years. Ali confessed to eight of these, but four remain unsolved.
Kasur was already notorious for sexual abuse, after the authorities uncovered a paedophile ring in the city in 2015.
