Man awarded life in prison for shooting friend dead

A model court has awarded rigorous imprisonment for life to an accused in a murder case. Jaffer Ali alias Meer was found guilty of killing his friend Muhammad Zamin with an unlicensed pistol in his flat within the jurisdiction of the Brigade police station in March 2022.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Abdul Zahoor Chandio of the Model Criminal Trial Court (East) announced his order after recording evidence and final arguments. “The prosecution has succeeded to bring home the guilt of the accused beyond shadow of any reasonable doubt and it has been proved that the accused Jaffer Ali alias Meer has committed murder of Muhammad Zamin Hussain by way of firing,” the judge ruled, sentencing him to rigorous imprisonment for life.

The convict was ordered to pay Rs1 million as compensation to the legal heirs of the deceased, and in case of failure to pay the same, he would have to undergo additional six-month imprisonment.

Furthermore, the judge awarded ten-year imprisonment to the convict for possessing an unlicensed pistol. He said the convict is entitled to the benefit of Section 382-B of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), meaning the time he had already spent behind bars since his arrest would be deducted from his prison term.

“The reason for not awarding the death penalty to the accused is that the prosecution has not proved motive of the incident, which creates strong mitigating circumstances to award lesser punishment to the accused,” the judge explained.

State prosecutor Muhammad Ashraf Bhatti contended that on March 29, 2022, Jaffer had shot and injured Zamin. The accused fled the scene but was later arrested by the Brigade police on the same date, he said. The victim remained admitted to a hospital for about one month but couldn’t survive, the prosecutor mentioned.

He argued that there was sufficient medical, forensic and ocular evidence to corroborate the charges against the accused. The weapon recovered from the possession of the accused matched with empties found at the crime scene, which proved that the weapon was used in the commissioning of the offence, he added.

In his statement under Section 342 of the CrPC, the accused claimed innocence stating that the victim committed suicide by shooting himself and that he had been falsely implicated in this case by the police.

The defence counsel said that the deceased was a drug addict and was not on good terms with his family, including his mother. An FIR was lodged under Section 302 (murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code at the Brigade police station on the complaint of the deceased’s mother.