How did police catch the Kasur child killer?

By
Web Desk
|

Suhail Shahzad, a 27-year-old rickshaw driver, kidnapped four children from Kasur’s Chunian industrial area. He later took the children to an abandoned spot, where he raped and then strangled them to death.

His victims, who ranged from the ages of 8-12 years, first went missing in June.

Last month, the police recovered the body of one of the four children and the remains of three others from a garbage dump in the area. Since then, the local police has been rounding up suspects to find the killer.

So, how did they finally cuff Suhail Shahzad?

- In one month, the police took DNA samples of over 15,000 men in the area, from the ages of 18-40 years.

- Cops then narrowed their search to the men who had previous records of child abuse. Upward to 16,000 men were shortlisted and their locations determined from the scene of the crime through Geo fencing.

- This led the police to Suhail Shahzad, the suspect. Shahzad was arrested in 2011 for sexually assaulting a five-year-old boy. He was later convicted to five years in jail but only spent two and a half years behind bars before being set free.

- With that information, Shahzad was first brought to the police station, in connection to the Chunian incidents, on September 22 and a few days later his DNA samples were taken to match with that of the dead children. Samples were taken from the semen present on one of the child’s clothes and the blood of another.

- Shahzad was also put through a polygraphic test while the final DNA result was awaited.

- Police further analyzed the data of over 8,000 cellphones.

- Finally, on Tuesday, the DNA test results confirmed that Shahzad had in fact raped and killed all four children.