PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Thursday directed the Ministry of Interior Affairs to remove the name of the petitioner convicted in the Mashal Khan murder case from the exit control list (ECL) after completion of his sentence awarded by a court some four years ago.
A division bench of the PHC comprising Justice SM Attique Shah and Justice Syed Arshad Ali after hearing arguments in the petition declared that the convict, Ali Khan, had already been released from the prison after completion of the sentence and there was no justification to keep his name on the ECL.
The bench directed the Interior Ministry to remove the name of the petitioner from the ECL forthwith after the assistant attorney general did not give a satisfactory reply.
Earlier, Malik Shahbaz Khan advocate, counsel for the petitioner, informed the bench that Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old student of Department of Mass Communication at Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, was lynched by a mob and shot at over allegations of blasphemy on April 13, 2017.
He said that the incident occurred in the jurisdiction of Sheikh Maltoon Police Station and the petitioner was also one of the accused to whom the Anti-Terrorism Court in Haripur later awarded imprisonment for three years.