ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it clear that Punjab police will be held responsible if the culprit behind the grisly rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab in Kasur are not brought to book.

A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar, was hearing a suo motu case pertaining to the Kasur incident.

The head of the joint investigation team (JIT) formed to probe the rape-cum-murder of the minor turned up before the bench in response to its notice.

The CJP expressed displeasure over failure of the police to catch the culprit despite passage of more than a week’s time.

He asked many days had gone by why the police had not made any headway in the case. Apart from recent Zainab’s rape and murder case, eight other incidents of similar nature have taken place in the city, he said.

Police would be held responsible, if the culprit was not brought to book, CJP Nisar told the head of the probe team.

The hearing was adjourned till January 20.

Zainab was abducted on January 04 from Kasur’s Kot Road area. Five days after her disappearance, she was found raped, dead and buried in a garbage dump on Jan 09.

The chief justice had taken suo motu notice of the gory Kasur incident on the victim girl’s father’s appeal for justice.

While the culprit involved in the rape-cum-murder of Zainab is still at large, police have conducted DNA tests of tissue samples obtained from around 300 suspects, but their results couldn’t match that of the culprit.