Two large buttons on both shoulders of Imran Ali’s—accused in Zainab murder case— jacket helped the police in nabbing the accused, said a BBC Urdu report on Wednesday.
In the black and white video footage, a bearded Imran Ali is seen wearing a zipper with two buttons on the shoulders.
Quoting a police officer privy to the developments in the case, the BBC report said: “The Kasur district has a population of over 3 million people, of which 0.7 million live in Kasur city. Even after filtering out women, children and old men from that demographic, the police were still left with at least 60 to 70 thousand men — only one of which was their suspect.”
However, the police had further narrowed down the investigation to 1,100 men living within the radius of investigation and collected their DNA samples to match it with the samples found on victim’s body. It was during this tedious process that Ali’s DNA was found to a perfect match with that of Zainab’s rapist.
Subsequently, the police reportedly raided the prime suspect’s—Imran Ali—house and were able to arrest him the assistance of his mother.
During the raid, police also found the jacket seen in the video footage at the house of the accused. BBC Urdu further reported that this was a tricky piece of the puzzle as in the black and white CCTV footage the jacket appeared to be white, which meant it could be of any dark colour in actuality.
The discovery of the jacket confirmed police’s suspicion. And later on, his mother and uncle said that they did become suspicious when they first saw the footage on TV and thought the man in the video looked like Imran but they did not bother to tell the police about it.
The reports quoted Imran as saying he killed the girls due to the fear of being caught for raping them. He went on to say that five out of eight victims were raped and murdered in under-construction houses and while three other, Zainab included, were raped and murdered close to the heaps of trash where their bodies were found.
Imran after raping them, he would murder the children and dispose off their bodies the same day.