SHC sets aside life imprisonment in murder case

The Sindh High Court has recently set aside the life imprisonment sentence of a man in a murder case, stating that the prosecution had failed to prove charges.

The appellant, Mohsin-ur-Rehman, was sentenced to life imprisonment by an additional district and sessions court South for murdering a man on March 22, 2015. According to the prosecution, the appellant along with other co-accused killed Azfar who was sitting in his milk shop. A counsel for the appellant submitted that the trial court had acquitted the co-accused Salman and Badaruddin from the charges but convicted Azfar in the case.

The counsel submitted that the appellant was falsely implicated in the case by the police three days after the incident, and his name and description were not included in the FIR. He submitted that the identification parade of the appellant was doubtful and there was no recovery of the weapon from his possession.

An additional prosecutor general supported the impugned judgment and requested the high court to dismiss the appeal. A single bench of the high court headed by Justice Irshad Ali Shah after hearing the arguments of the counsel and perusal of the evidence observed that the FIR of the incident had been registered after three days of delay by the complainant without disclosing names and description of the suspects while the prosecution witnesses did not mention the same in their police statements, which was surprising.

The SHC observed that a prosecution witness, Fiza Sharif, had deposed that the deceased was her cousin and he had threatened her with showing her photos with the appellant to her parents, as a result of which the appellant killed him.

The bench remarked that the witness’s testimony which could not be relied upon as her statement was recorded five months after the incident and 11 days after the identification parade.

The high court observed that in presence of weak evidence, it would be safe to conclude that the prosecution had not been able to prove its case against the appellant beyond any shadow of doubt and so he was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. The SHC set aside the trial court order and life imprisonment sentence of the appellant and ordered his release, if not required in other cases.