Muezzin cleared, teenager now prime suspect in murder of 6-year-old

Published January 14, 2015
17-year-old suspect Shoaib - Screengrab
17-year-old suspect Shoaib - Screengrab

LAHORE: A teenager on Wednesday confessed to molesting and killing a 6-year-old boy who was found strangled on the roof of a mosque on January 2 in Green Town.

Seventeen year old Shoaib, a hair dresser at a barber shop near the mosque, was one of several suspects arrested by the police following the gruesome murder of a young boy named Moin.

The CCPO Lahore, during a press conference, confirmed that Shoaib confessed to murdering the child. The confession came after a DNA test directly implicated the teenager in the crime.

Shoaib confessed to molesting the victim several times before killing him, police said. A doctor at the morgue corroborated that the postmortem had revealed the victim was sexually assaulted before being murdered.

Earlier, the muezzin (who leads the call to prayer) of the mosque had been the prime accused in the young boy’s death, but police cleared him of involvement. A 'confession' by the muezzin that was attained and widely spread on social media was rejected by police as being unrelated to this specific case.

In the video, the accused admitted to a grisly crime and said, "The devil lead me to a gruesome act".

"I wasn't tortured by police and am giving my confession out of the goodness of my heart," the suspect added in the video, in which he was flanked by a police officer.

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