Karachi: Over six years after his arrest, a district and sessions court sentenced on Thursday an alleged serial rapist and his aide to 15 years in prison after convicting them in two robbery cases.
Ali Hajiano, infamously known as the white Corolla rapist, was arrested along with his accomplice Umair Khan in January 2009 — a much hailed crack on the terror that had gripped the women of DHA and Clifton at the time.
Hajiano, booked in at least 35 cases of rape, attempt to murder and robbery, was described by the investigators as a heinous criminal who drove around in a white Toyota Corolla car, rob families, rape women and even transgender persons, often seen begging on the roadside.
Though the arrest brought solace to the residents of the vicinities, the trial against the suspects lingered on as the victims failed to appear before the court to testify against them.
Since then, the two suspects have been acquitted in more than 15 cases for lack of evidence. However, Thursday’s verdict came as a major breakthrough in the deliverance of justice in the heinous crimes.
The court found Hajano and Khan guilty of robbing the houses of Khawar Shamim and Saad Sami in January and February 2009 in DHA. The South district’s additional sessions judge, Sikandar Ameer Pahore, who conducted the trial in the judicial complex, pronounced the verdicts after recording evidence of witnesses and hearing final arguments from both th sides.
The court handed down 15 years imprisonment to both the accused in each case and directed the convicts to pay a fine of Rs25,000 each. In case of default, they would undergo an additional jail term of six months.
The judge, who escaped a drive-by shooting earlier this year, observed that both the complainants rightly picked out the accused during the identification parades and also testified against them before the trial court. The wife of a complainant was also an eyewitness and the evidence of all the witnesses remained unshakable on material points, it added.
The two cases were registered under Sections 392 (robbery), 398 (robbery when armed with deadly weapons) and 34 (common intention) of Pakistan Penal Code at Darakshan and Gizri police stations.
The same court is also trying the other cases against the suspects and has fixed August 4 for the hearing of the same. According to a court official, all 14 cases against the suspects are in the evidence stage.
Hajiano is the son of a former bureaucrat of the country, Gul Muhammad, who at one time was one of the candidates for presidency. He maintains that the charges against him are false and a conspiracy against him with mala fide intentions for his father’s enmity with the former military dictator Pervez Musharraf and other top politicians.
