Mere 6-second CCTV video led police investigators to arrest paedophileprit.

PESHAWAR    -   It was a crime novel that taught a serial rap­ist-cum-killer of minor girls how to evade arrest, eliminate any evidences of his crime and keep on changing identity while committing the crime time and again.

Police investigators re­mained in a quandary for several weeks while searching for Sohail, ali­as Hazrat Ali, who used to change his appear­ance on each Sunday he would go out to find his prey, a minor girl whom he would sexually as­sault and then murder.

Sohail assaulted first girl on July 3 and the last girl he assaulted was on July 27 and during this entire period, he avoided a mobile phone and also put a romal on his head and face so that he could not be identified.

The investigators said the accused, who is a young man, would kill a minor girl soon after rap­ing her, with an aim to hide his crime and con­ceal the evidence.

Sohail told investiga­tors that he had learnt from a novel how to change his appearance while committing his crime and evade arrest.

During the course of in­vestigation, it was a mere six-second video from a CCTV camera that ena­bled the investigators to arrest the rapist of three minor girls and killer of two of the victims, senior officials said.

The culprit used all tac­tics to evade arrest as he avoided mobile phone, which could have been traced by investigators, while he also covered his face with a cloth on Sun­days when he would go out to find his prey. The only thing he did not change was his shoes that he used in all the three cases of assaulting minor girls.

Owing to the serious­ness of the cases, the KP police chief Moazzam Jah Ansari was himself monitoring the investi­gations as the Chief Min­ister also took notice of the incidents. The police collected CCTV footage from the entire city and later spotted one per­son speaking to the seri­ous killer. The police lat­er gathered the details of hundreds of calls in the area and identified the man, who later led the police to the serial kill­er Sohail.

The police said the cul­prit is a psychopath who would go out on each Sunday to assault a mi­nor girl. Sohail also told the interrogators that he himself had been sexual­ly assaulted in his child­hood and that he later learnt from a novel how to keep his identity se­cret and evade arrest.

KP IGP Moazzam Jah Ansari told media lat­er on that the culprit was such a character that even novels could be written on him as he was much sharp and in­telligent but he used his intelligence for nativity and crime.