KARACHI: Seven accused who had been declared proclaimed offenders in the Naqeebullah Mehsud murder case appeared in an anti-terrorism court on Monday to seek interim pre-arrest bail. On January 23, eighteen accused, including former Malir senior superintendent of police (SSP) Rao Anwar, were exonerated from charges of the extrajudicial killing of a young aspiring fashion model from South Wazrisitan, Naqeebullah Mehsud, and three other victims in a staged encounter at an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of the port city in January 2018. The court had issued perpetual warrants for the arrest of seven fleeing accused.
On Monday, then Shah Latif Town SHO Amanullah Marwat, then Sohrab Goth SHO Shoaib Shaikh, assistant sub-inspector Gada Hussain, head constables Sadaquat Ali Shah and Mohsin Abbas and constables Raja Shamim Mukhtar and Raja Riaz turned up before the administrative judge of the anti-terrorism courts and moved an application seeking interim pre-arrest bail. They appeared in the ATC after obtaining protective bail from the Sindh High Court in order to avoid their arrest in the case. The judge ordered transfer of their bail pleas for hearing to the ATC-XVI that had decided the case.
According to the prosecution, the absconding accused were allegedly involved in staging the fake encounter and fabricating evidence by foisting weapons on each victim to prove that they were militants. The former SSP, along with his two dozen subordinates, had been accused of murdering Naqbeebullah and three other detainees in a staged shootout on January 13, 2018 after dubbing them as militants. Initially, the police had claimed that the four people killed in the shootout in the Malir area were terrorists, but it emerged later that one of the victims was an aspiring model from South Waziristan and not a militant, triggering outcry on the social media and widespread protests by civil society, demanding punishment for the ex-SSP and his team. In its judgement, the judge had observed that the prosecution failed to prove its case against the 18 accused beyond any reasonable doubt.
“Since the sufficient evidence in terms of reliability, cohesion, trustworthiness has not been collected nor produced regarding the happening of the incident of abduction of abductees Hazrat Ali, Muhammad Qasim and deceased Naqeebullah, no sufficient reliable evidence beyond reasonable shadow of doubts regarding participation of the accused in the fake police encounter and their sharing of common intention with absconding accused is produced, the right of benefit of doubt cannot be withheld even in high-profile cases like this one,” he noted.
