An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Lahore, on Saturday, awarded a death sentence to two offenders Abid Malhi and Shafqat Ali gang-raping a woman on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway last year.

The trial took place in Lahore's Camp Jail, and Judge Arshad Hussain Bhatta heard the proceedings and announced the verdict that has been reserved earlier on Thursday. As many as 50 witnesses appeared before the court to record their testimonies.

Judge Arshad Hussain awarded both culprits with a death penalty, life imprisonment, and slapped them with a fine of Rs50,000 each.

The judgment was pronounced in the presence of the local magistrate, police officials, the petitioner, and the culprits. The culprits will be transferred from Camp Jail to Kot Lakhpat Jail, where the sentence will be carried out.

The landmark decision, the first case of gang-rape where offenders have been awarded death sentence, came almost six and a half months after the horrific incident took place.

The incident:

Abid and Shafqat gang-raped a woman on the Lahore-Sialkot motorway while she was waiting with her children for help on the motorway after her car stopped either due to fuel shortage in September 2020. She called her relative in Gujranwala for help who advised her to call the motorway police while he, himself, left immediately to her rescue and found her terrified with her clothes stained with blood.

As per the police, two armed men (Abid and Shafqat) found the woman alone in her car with her children and forced them to a nearby field at gunpoint, and gang-raped her. Punjab Police had identified both offenders by using DNA sampling and arrested them by constituting 20 teams of Lahore Police and CIA.

The teams were headed by the deputy inspector general of police (investigation) and constituted on the orders of Inspector General Inam Ghani to investigate the case.

After the culprits were arrested, the victim identified them through an identification parade and recorded her statement via phone under section 161.