Appeals against death penalty in PIDC car bombing case dismissed

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday dismissed the appeals of two convicts and upheld their death sentence in the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) car bombing case. The court, however, set aside the death penalty of the third convict and acquitted him for lack of evidence against him.

Abdul Aziz Baloch, Mangla Khan and Abdul Hameed Bugti, said to be activists of an anti-state organisation, were sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Karachi that found them guilty of the car bombing outside the PIDC building on November 15, 2005.

Four people were killed and 21 others injured after a bomb exploded in a car parked outside the PIDC building during the morning rush hour. The explosion also caused damage to a fast food outlet, bank branches on the ground floor and offices on the upper floors, besides several parked vehicles.

According to the prosecution, absconding co-accused Sardar Brahimdakh Bugti, grandson of the late Bugti chieftain and central leader of Jamhoori Watan Party Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, had tasked the three men for carrying out a bomb explosion outside the Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) office because the PPL was not providing jobs to their people.

Two of the appellants, identified by witnesses during the identification parade before a magistrate, had also confessed their crime before the District South judicial magistrate.

One suspect, Abdul Jabbar, was earlier released by the police during the initial stage of the case because sufficient evidence was not found against him. The prosecution presented 30 witnesses, including two eyewitnesses, to prove the guilt of the accused.

The appellants’ counsel claimed that the prosecution witnesses’ evidence had been manipulated by the police and some of the witnesses had not even been present at the site of the incident.

The counsel also said the judicial confession of the appellants could not be relied upon, as it was not voluntary, to convict the appellants in the case. He sought the acquittal of the convicts because the prosecution had failed to prove the charges.

The deputy prosecutor general supported the ATC judgment and said that eyewitnesses had correctly identified the appellants as the persons who had parked the vehicle with the bomb in it and that later exploded, killing four people and injuring 21 others. He requested the court to dismiss the appeals.

After hearing the arguments of the counsel and the perusal of the evidence, the SHC’s division bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha said the prosecution had proved its case against two of the appellants on the basis of their confessions and their correct identification at the scene, where they parked the car and left before it exploded, by reliable, trustworthy and confidence-inspiring eyewitnesses and other corroborative evidence.

The court said that no doubt this was a brutal and barbaric attack aimed at murdering innocent citizens in broad daylight in a busy part of Karachi used by bankers and other office workers, and which was intended and designed to create fear and terror among civilians and the business community of the city, and actually created much fear and terror, and as such this was an act of terrorism falling under purview of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

The bench dismissed the appeals of Abdul Aziz Baloch and Mangla Khan and upheld their death sentences handed down to them by the trial court.

The court, however, said that the prosecution had failed to prove its case against the third appellant, Abdul Hameed Bugti, as there seems to be doubt about his involvement in the car bombing outside the PIDC House, and set aside his death sentence and other imprisonment sentences giving him the benefit of the doubt.