Paedophile Sohail Ayaz was sentenced to death on Wednesday, the 18th of November, by a trial court in Rawalpindi. He was sentenced to death on three counts, in addition to being handed down three sentences of rigorous imprisonment for the crimes of abducting and raping young boys and subsequently distributing videos of these vile acts.
Sohail Ayaz has previously been convicted for acts of paedophilia in both the United Kingdom (U.K) and Italy. He was deported to Pakistan because of these crimes.
Both Ayaz and his accomplice, Khurram Tahir, were found guilty of kidnapping three children by Additional District and Sessions Judge Jehangir Ali Gondal on Wednesday. Ayaz was given the death penalty for the crimes of abduction through deceitful misleading, drugging of children via methamphetamine and rape under Section 367-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
The verdict of the court stated, ‘He be hanged by neck till his death’.
The court also found Sohail Ayaz guilty under Sections 337, 337-J and 292-C of the PPC – sodomy and participating and profiting from the recording of and sale of child pornography. For these crimes he was given three sentences of life imprisonment, plus three sentences of 15 years of rigorous imprisonment and three more sentences of having to spend 7 years in imprisonment.
He was ordered to pay each of the families of his three victims Rs. 500,000. And, he was fined a total of Rs. 4.5 million by the court.
The court noted that Ayaz was a repeat offender, who in spite of being convicted for similar crimes in other countries, had still not improved his behaviour or repented. The court declared that, “Such accused is like a malignant knot in the body of civil society and deserves nothing but a harsh surgical treatment”. Judge Gondal observed that Sohail Ayaz’s vile acts were “inhuman, rather worse than beasts”, as even animals do not destroy the innocence of cubs.