SHC sets aside life imprisonment of two men in girl’s rape and murder case

The Sindh High Court (SHC) has set aside life imprisonment of two men in a case pertaining to rape and murder of the minor girl, stating that the prosecution had failed to prove charges against them.

Ghulam Haider and Mohammad Salah were sentenced to life imprisonment by an East additional district and sessions court for committing rape and murder of a five-year-old girl in Gulistan-e-Jauhar on October 31, 2010.

According to the prosecution, the appellants committed rape of a minor girl before strangling her to death and they later dumped her body into a pound. The appellants denied charges and submitted that they were tortured by police in custody. They added that they were made to ejaculate in a handkerchief for obtaining evidence against them.

An additional prosecutor general opposed the appeals and requested the high court to dismiss them. A single bench comprising Justice Omar Sial after hearing the arguments and perusal of evidence observed that vaginal swabs were collected by the doctor on November 3, 2010, and given to the investigation officer the same day, but they were sent for analysis after 50 days and in that period, they were lying at the police station.

The high court observed that police had claimed that the sperm-stained handkerchief was found near the place of the incident at the pointation of the appellant. The bench observed that doubts would have been resolved had the handkerchief also been sent for chemical analysis and DNA match but it was not done.

The SHC observed that the handkerchief that was produced at trial was of a different colour than what the police claimed to have recovered. The high court also observed that the testimonies of two eyewitnesses could not be relied upon who claimed to have seen the appellants with the girl as it was strange that both the eyewitnesses had seen the deceased girl in the company of the appellants and both of them then went to Larkana soon thereafter and also returned the same day and informed the complainant the same day regarding what they had seen.

The SHC observed that the complainant had claimed that between 7:30pm and 12:30am, he had had announcements made from the local mosque regarding his missing daughter but neither of the two witnesses got wind of the girl who they had seen a little while earlier, and instead they both decided to go to Larkana.

The high court observed that police had initially recorded that death was a consequence of drowning but it was not explained at the trial how it was determined that the deceased had been raped and murdered when the body was brought to the doctor. The SHC added that the doctor had noticed that the body was in an advanced state of decomposition but there were no obvious marks of injuries on the body.

The bench observed that doctor also opined that she was not in a position to ascertain the cause of death and she also did not conclude whether the deceased had been raped prior to death.

The high court observed that there was a complete disconnection between what the prosecution alleged and what the medical evidence revealed.

The SHC observed that it was well settled that if doubt arose in the prosecution’s case, the benefit of the doubt must go to the accused. The single bench set aside the trial court order and ordered the appellants to be released if not required in other cases.