LAHORE, Pakistan, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Protests broke out across Pakistan on Thursday after the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl in a district south of Lahore, due to public anger at what is seen as the authorities' failure to investigate such cases.

It is the 12th such murder in the town of Kasur in a year, and has raised concern that a serial killer may be on the loose.

Two people were killed on Wednesday when police fired at angry protesters in Kasur, and a local resident said schools, offices, and markets remained shut in the town on Thursday.

Demonstrations were held in all cities between Faisalabad in the northeast down to Pakistan's southern metropolis of Karachi.

In Lahore, the provincial capital of the state where Kasur is located, protesters blocked a major road connecting the two, causing traffic between them to be suspended.

Police recovered the body of Zainab Ansari from a garbage dumpster in Kasur on Tuesday, four days after she was reported missing.

The chief minister of Punjab province, Shahbaz Sharif visited Ansari's parents to assure them that the perpetrators would be apprehended soon, a provincial government spokesman said.

"(Sharif) has announced Rs 10 million ($90,000) for anyone giving information about the kidnapper," Punjab government spokesman Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan told Reuters. He said it could not be ruled out that the murders involved a serial killer.

A police official speaking on condition on anonymity said two of Ansari's relatives had been interrogated and 26 locals are currently in custody and being questioned. He added that police are waiting for forensic evidence to be collected and analysed.

Ansari's family doubts justice will be done.

"We don't have any expectations from police, as we gave proof to police including the CCTV footage, but they could do nothing," her uncle Hafiz Muhammad Adnan told Reuters.

Adnan said the kidnapper waited to dump the body after search parties took a break after four days of looking.

"It appears as if the kidnapper is a local who developed familiarity with Zainab to take her along, probably telling her that he would take her to her parents," he said.

A number of police officials have been transferred out of the region for failing to investigate complaints of missing children since 2015, when authorities uncovered what they said was a paedophile ring linked to a prominent local family.

At least two people have been convicted in connection with that case, in which authorities say hundreds of children in the district were abused. ($1 = 110.5000 Pakistani rupees) (Writing by Saad Sayeed; Editing by Hugh Lawson)</s>Protesters marched for a second day Thursday in the Pakistani city of Kasur over the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl whose body was found dumped on a garbage pile.

Zainab Amin’s killing has angered local people who say the authorities in Punjab province have done too little to keep their children safe after a series of similar killings.

At least two people died Wednesday as protesters clashed with police.

Punjab’s Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif ordered police to arrest the girl’s killers in the next 24 hours and offered a 10 million Pakistani rupee bounty (over $90,000) for anyone who helps identify those responsible.

He also asked police to provide full details of the 11 murders of young girls in the same area before that of Zainab.

Amid rising anger, demonstrators ransacked the office of a local lawmaker for the ruling party, Naeem Safdar, on Thursday and chanted slogans calling for the resignation of Shehbaz Sharif.

An autopsy has confirmed that Zainab was strangled and sodomized and suggests she was raped, the medical officer who carried out the examination, Dr Quratulain Atique, told CNN.

There were torture marks on her face and Zainab’s tongue was crushed between her teeth, she said. The report suggests that when the autopsy was performed, she may have been dead for two or three days already.

Geo News reported that Zainab was taken from near her home in Kasur on January 4 while her parents were in Saudi Arabia on an Umrah pilgrimage. Surveillance video provided by the family to police shows Zainab being led away by a man.

Her father, Muhammad Amin Ansari, now back in Pakistan, told Geo News that police were not doing enough to find their child. He said they would not bury their daughter until those responsible were arrested.

Kasur district was previously at the center of a child sexual abuse scandal in which a gang of up to 25 men was accused of blackmailing scores of children into making sex videos between 2009 and 2014. The abuse was uncovered in 2015 and a number of suspects arrested.

The experience has scarred the local community. “For the last two years, we are living in fear, parents are scared to send their kids outside,” Zainab’s father told reporters.

Kasur regional police officer Muhammad Kausar Zulfiqar told CNN that the girl’s body was found on a heap of garbage only 100 meters from her home in Kasur.

This is the 12th such case in the same 2-kilometer area, the regional police office confirmed, and DNA test results match in at least five of the cases. Zainab was first reported missing on January 5 by her uncle, the regional police office added.

Outrage over Zainab’s murder quickly spread on social media in Pakistan, with many using the hashtag #JusticeForZainab.

Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel Peace Price winner, lent her voice to the push for justice.

“Heartbroken to hear about Zainab — a 7 year old child abused and brutally killed in Kasur, Pakistan,” she tweeted. “This has to stop. Gov and the concerned authorities must take action.”</s>Eight year old Zainab is the 12th child to be raped and murdered in Kasur, Pakistan.

The body of eight-year-old Zainab was discovered in a rubbish dump on Tuesday, five days after she had gone missing. Post-mortem reports have revealed that she had been raped and strangled to death.

Police in Kasur say that at least five of the 12 cases are linked to one suspect who is being hunted by officers and DNA samples have been taken from approximately 90 possible suspects.

Zainab’s murder has caused outrage all throughout Pakistan. Just hours before her funeral, on Wednesday police and protesters clashed as demonstrators tried to force their way into Kasur’s police station.

The protests have killed at least two people and several remain injured after paramilitary troops were called in to restore order.

Zainab went missing while she was on her way to a Quran recital. Her body was discovered just two kilometres away from her home.

Her parents were in Mecca for Umrah - an Islamic pilgrimage - when the eight-year-old was abducted and killed.

Shortly after arriving at Benazir Bhutto International airport, Zainab’s father alleged that police did not fully cooperate to finding his daughter, “If the police would have acted immediately, the culprit would have been caught,” he told reporters.

The family says that police did not take any action after reporting her missing and that relatives were the ones who recovered CCTV footage of Zainab.

According to Kasur police, incidents similar to Zainab’s seem to appear every other month.

Just last month, a nine-year-old went missing from Kasur’s city centre. The girl managed to escape her captor and returned home but has been left severely traumatized, reports say.

Zainab’s story has caught the attention of politicians, activists, artists and actors with the hashtag #JusticeforZainab now trending worldwide. Malala Yousafzai is one of the many who have joined the family’s call for justice.

The condemnable & horrific rape & murder of little Zainab exposes once again how vulnerable our children are in our society. This is not the first time such horrific acts have happened. We have to act swiftly to punish the guilty & ensure that our children are better protected. pic.twitter.com/9f7OM3hYT1 — Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) January 10, 2018

Shocked, Disgusted and feeling sick to the core! What a shameful day for us, Zainab's killers must not only be hanged, they should be given such exemplary punishment that people should remember the lessson for ever. Pakistan rulers we're waiting for action! — Shahid Afridi (@SAfridiOfficial) January 10, 2018</s>Thousands of Pakistanis rallied on Thursday to seek justice for an eight-year-old girl, who was raped, murdered and her body left on a rubbish tip.

Young students from schools, colleges and universities were joined by the civil society activists and lawyers at protests against the crime in the city of Kasur in the central province of Punjab.

Police found the body of the girl on the rubbish tip in the middle of the city on Tuesday, a week after she was kidnapped, local Police Chief Zulfikar Ahmed said.

Ahmed said an autopsy on Wednesday suggested the girl was raped before being strangled to death at least six days ago.

Protests that erupted in the city on Wednesday continued for the second day as an angry mob ransacked a hospital and the private residence of a local member of parliament, police official Iftikhar Ahmed said.

Students called for the death of the perpetrator at rallies from the southern metropolis of Karachi to the north-western city of Peshawar.

“We want the culprit to be hanged publicly so that no one dares commit such a crime in the future,” a mother at the protest in Peshawar told Dunya Television.

He said there have been a dozen similar incidents in Kasur in the past in which minors were kidnapped, raped and killed, Iftikhar.

He said the DNA testing of the latest victim and in previous cases suggested that a “lunatic serial killer” was behind almost all of the crimes.

 FAT/SH</s>This week, a 7-year-old girl named Zainab was found dead in a dumpster in Kasur, Pakistan.

Police say she'd been kidnapped on her way home from a Koran recital; the perpetrator raped her, then strangled her to death. Zainab's father has accused the police of failing to act quickly and decisively to track down his missing daughter.

Zainab's death has horrified Pakistan. On Thursday, one newscaster found a way to talk about the tragedy. News anchor Kiran Naz of Samaa TV, a Pakistani satellite news channel, brought her young child onto the air with her.

She, too, is a mother, she told her audience. In a stirring monologue, she went on: “In this country we’ve entered into a strange time — someone is martyred, and it's taken as no big deal. Who died, why did they die, we don’t even get the answer. But someone wisely said: 'The smaller the coffin, the heavier it is.' That kind of funeral is the kind that has the city of Kasur and all of Pakistan out on the streets today.”

Naz then reflected on what Zainab's parents must be feeling. They had been away when she was abducted, on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

“Her parents were out buying her toys, and at that very same moment, some brute was dumping this poor girl’s body in a garbage dump,” Naz said. “Imagine that moment: There they were, thinking, 'When will we hold our innocent girl again to our chests? When will we kiss her cheeks again?' and here, some lout made sure that would never happen again. This isn’t just the killing of a little girl — this is the killing of an entire society. In Zainab’s funeral, we are witnessing the funeral of humanity.”

The clip quickly went viral on social media, capturing the attention of an angry country.

[A 7-year-old Pakistani girl was raped, strangled and left in a dumpster]

It's not the first time a child was killed in Kasur. At least 12 other children have been kidnapped and sexually assaulted over the past two years. Police say at least five of those cases can be linked to one person via DNA. Several hundred law enforcement officials are involved in the manhunt; at least 90 suspects have had their DNA tested.

In 2015, a gang running a child sex ring was busted in Kasur by the police. At least 280 children had been abducted and assaulted over six years. The families of the children were often blackmailed with videos of their children being brutalized.

Zainab's death has struck a nerve in Pakistan. Online, cricket stars, major performers and politicians decried her death. The Pakistani military offered to help track down the killer. On Wednesday, many of the city's shopkeepers closed their doors, a show of solidarity with Zainab's family.

And on the streets, riots were roiling on. At least two people were killed after a crowd tried to storm a police station.</s>Police in Pakistan's Karachi city have arrested a school guard after he allegedly tried to rape a minor girl.

The unidentified accused was taken into custody after the five-year-old told her parents about the attempted abuse. The child's parents said that she complained about the guard after returning from school on Thursday, 11 January.

Pakistan's Geo TV reported that the girl's family reached the school in the Ibrahim Hyderi area of the city on Friday and beat up the man before handing him over to the authorities.

Deputy Inspector General East Sultan Khawaja told the network that they have started their investigation and have interrogated the suspect, while the Chief Minister of Sindh state has asked for a detailed report of the incident at the earliest.

The incident comes amid ongoing protests against the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl, Zainab Ansari, from Pakistan's Kasur.

Zainab's body was found 2km away from her house on 9 January by passers-by, five days after she was kidnapped on 4 January. The girl was on her way to a Quran recital when a man approached her, grabbed her by the hand and led her away.

Police suspect that Zainab's alleged rapist is the same person who abducted, raped and murdered five other children in the city of Kasur in 2017, local media reports stated.

Kasur, an hour's drive from Lahore, has witnessed a surge in child abuse cases in recent years.

In 2017 alone, the city saw 12 cases of rape and murder, Punjab's Child Protection Bureau said. One of those cases was that of six-year-old Kainaat Batool, who was raped when she left her home to buy yoghurt from a nearby shop.

The girl had left her home on the evening of 11 November but did not return home. Sometime later she was found lying in a trash pile outside the city's main wholesale market. After being treated at a hospital, the little girl is back home, but still struggling with the horror of what happened to her.

Kainaat's father, Ehsan, told Geo TV: "The day we found her, we rushed her to Lahore's Children Hospital. She stayed there till Jan 2, after which the doctors said it was best to take her home.

"But we knew she was not yet okay."

Data from Pakistan's social awareness organisation Aahung suggests that nearly 47% of child sexual abuse incidents happen at the hands of relatives. It further mentions that about 43% of the offenders are known to the child, while only 7% are outsiders.</s>A mob angered over the recent rape and murder of an 8-year-old Pakistan girl attacked a police station and a nearby government building in eastern Punjab province on Wednesday, triggering clashes that left at least two people dead and several injured, police said.

The violence erupted in the city of Kasur hours before the funeral of Zainab Ansari, whose case has drawn wide public outrage.

The girl went missing last week while going to a nearby home for Quranic studies. Her parents, who were away at a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia at the time, returned on Wednesday, landing at the Islamabad airport.

Zainab’s body was found on Tuesday in a garbage bin, senior police officer Imran Nawaz Khan said. Police say she was abducted, raped and murdered. Officer Maqsood Ahmed said six girls were sexually assaulted in recent months in Kasur and that police were probing whether there was a connection in the cases.

WATCH: Pakistani student beaten to death by peers in latest ‘blasphemy killing’

Activists on social media have condemned the government for failing to arrest those involved in the crime.

As the attack on the police station and the subsequent clashes unfolded Wednesday, local TVs broadcast footage showing police firing shots in the air and toward the stone-pelting mob, trying to disperse it. In one segment, an officer asks another to hold direct fire, after which the second officer is seen continuing to shoot at the protesters.

Also Wednesday, the Lahore High Court’s chief justice ordered a probe into Zainab’s killing.

Zulfiqar Hameed, the police chief in Kasur, refused to say whether the two people killed in Wednesday’s clashes had died from police gunshots. Provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said the police were trying to contain the violence and find and arrest those involved in the girl’s murder.

Kasur shop owners shut their businesses Wednesday to express their anger over Zainab’s slaying.

READ MORE: Why are women in Pakistan and India at risk of brutal violence?

Firebrand cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri who took part in Ansari’s funeral service demanded the local government be replaced, saying it has “no right to remain in power after the killing of Zainab Ansari.”

In a speech to thousands of mourners, he blamed the Punjab chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, for failing to “protect lives and honour of innocent girls” in the province.

Qadri also issued an ultimatum to Sharif and Sanaullah to step down by Jan. 17 to avoid street protest.

Qadri is a staunch political rival of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party and he has led violent rallies in the capital, Islamabad, since 2014 after eight of his supporters were killed in anti-government rallies in Lahore, Punjab provincial capital.</s>As Pakistan continues to protest the rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari in Kasur, Samaa TV news anchor Kiran Naz chose to register her protest by hosting the news bulletin with her daughter. “Today, I am not your news anchor Kiran Naz, today I am here as a mother. This is why I am sitting here with my daughter,” she said, as her daughter sat comfortably in her lap. “It is true when they say that the smallest coffins are the heaviest and entire Pakistan is burdened by the weight of her coffin.”

The TV journalist was referring to the rape and murder case which has sent shockwaves across Pakistan this week. The girl was allegedly abducted on January 4 when she was attending a Quran class. Her body was recovered by the police from a heap of garbage on January 9. The incident prompted severe backlash from civil society members and rights activists who have been protesting the repeated instances of child abuse and abduction in the Kasur region.

Here’s all you need to know about the case

The girl’s parents were on an umrah (pilgrimage) to Saudi Arabia when the incident took place. Naz on Wednesday pointed out the the tragic irony, saying that while the parents were praying for their daughter’s long life in Saudi Arabia, “a monster in Pakistan” killed her. “This is not just a child’s murder. This is the entire society’s murder,” she said.

The incident has sparked violent protests in the country. On Wednesday, police action against protesters resulted in the death of two civilians. Several others were injured.

For all the latest Pakistan News, download Indian Express App</s>Pakistani residents carry the body of a girl during her funeral in Kasur in Punjab Province on Wednesday, following her rape and murder (AFP photo)

LAHORE, Pakistan — Two civilians were killed when officers fired live rounds to disburse crowds that attacked a police station in Pakistan on Wednesday in a protest over the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl.

Police recovered the body of Zainab Ansari on Tuesday from a garbage dumpster in the town of Kasur in eastern Pakistan, four days after she was reported missing.

It was the twelfth incident of a girl being adducted, raped, and killed in the past year in Kasur district, police say. Residents have been furious at the authorities for what they see as a failure to investigate such cases.

The spokesman for Pakistan’s Punjab province, Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan, told Reuters that protesters turned violent and attacked a local police office.

“They started throwing stones at the office and some of armed protesters shot bullets at police. In order to stop them, police resorted to aerial firing,” Khan said, adding that two people were killed and one wounded as a result.

“A peaceful protest was taking place, some students threw stones and police responded by firing at the crowd,” Saleem ur Rehman, a resident who was at the protest, told Reuters. “The law and order situation here is really bad and there have been many such incidents. That is what the protest was about.”

Ansari’s parents, who were not in the country when their daughter was kidnapped, returned on Wednesday.

“I want justice! I want justice!” Zainab’s mother cried, surrounded by reporters at the international airport in the capital Islamabad.

Ansari’s case has attracted the attention of the country’s civilian and military leadership, with Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif calling for immediate action.

Police in Kasur deny they have been lax in investigating child abductions in the town. Regional police officer Zulfiqar Hameed told Reuters that four kidnappers had been arrested and another killed during an arrest attempt.

“Investigations reveal that in each case a paedophile kidnaps little girls, rapes them and kills them,” he said.

The case of Ansari would soon be solved, he said: “We have got CCTV footage that shows a young man taking her along. We will catch him very soon,” he said, adding that 95 DNA samples had been taken from suspects.

A number of police officials have been transferred out of the region for failing to investigate complaints of missing children since 2015, when authorities uncovered what they called a paedophile ring linked to a prominent local family. At least two people have been convicted in the case, in which authorities say hundreds of children in the district were abused.</s>A police officer has been sacked for mishandling an investigation into the kidnap, rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in Pakistan.

Zainab Ansari disappeared on her way to a lesson to study the Koran on January 4.

Her body was found in a rubbish heap more than a mile from her home in Kasur, close to the border with India, on Tuesday.

Officials initially said she was eight years old but her family have confirmed she was just six.

The brutal murder has sparked outrage across Pakistan, with up to 1,000 protesters lining the streets in Kasur, Lahore and Karachi.

Following a meeting with Zainab’s father Anees, Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif sacked Kasur’s police chief for negligence.

Mr Ansari had accused the police of being slow to respond after his daughter was reported missing last week.

Zainab’s uncle, Ghulam Rasool, said: ‘Police are not co-operating with us. We want justice.

‘We want the culprit to be brought in front of us. We don’t want an innocent to be presented as the culprit and killed just to wash this case.’

Two people were killed and three others wounded as demonstrators clashed with police in Kasur on Wednesday, hours before Zainab’s funeral.

Three police officers were arrested for opening fire on protesters instead of into the air.

The protests continued into Thursday, with Kasur police spokesman Muhammad Sajid saying protestors had ‘thrown stones on the buildings of the government hospital, police and deputy commissioner’s office’.

Up to 20 people have been arrested over Zainab’s murder ‘but the investigators have been unable to find any clue so far’ Mr Sajid said.

Zainab is the eighth child to have been raped and murdered in Kasur in the last 12 months, according to police.

The Punjab government has offered a reward of 10 million rupees (£66,460) for information leading to the killer’s capture, as well as compensation for the protesters killed on Wednesday.

Zainab’s death comes less than three years after a scandal in Kasur when at least 280 children were filmed being sexually abused by a gang of 25 men, who blackmailed their parents by threatening to leak the videos.
The rape and murder of six-year-old girl Zainab in Pakistan has sparked outrage across the country. Two people die in protests in Kasur city.