Shahrukh Jatoi, co-accused furnish surety bonds before SC

Shahrukh Jatoi and two others accused of being involved in the 2012 murder of Shahzeb Khan appeared in the Supreme Court’s Karachi registry on Wednesday and submitted surety bonds as per the court’s earlier order.

The top court had, on January 13, suspended a pardon proceeding for the accused pending in a sessions court and directed the ministry of interior to place their names on the Exit Control List.

The court also issued bailable arrest warrants for all accused and directed the SSP concerned to ensure their appearance before the court on January 29. Jatoi and two other co-accused Nawab Siraj Ali Talpur and his brother Nawab Sajjad Ali Talpur appeared in the SC registry on Wednesday and furnished surety bonds of Rs500,000 each.

Earlier this month, rights activists had approached the SC challenging a Sindh High Court decision that set aside a death sentence verdict against the accused after defence lawyers argued that Shahzeb’s murder was an act on personal enmity not terrorism.

Civil society activists moved the top court against the dropping of terrorism charges in Shahzeb’s murder. The court had accepted the pleas and fixed the case for further arguments. On November 28, the SHC had set aside an anti-terrorism court’s conviction of Jatoi observing that terrorism laws was misapplied by the police and ATC trial proceedings against appellants [the accused] was not proper. The court had declared that Shahzeb’s murder was case of “personal vendetta”, not terrorism and ordered that trial proceedings be remanded back to a sessions court for retrial.

Jatoi along with Nawab Siraj Ali Talpur were sentenced to death while Siraj’s brother Nawab Sajjad Ali Talpur with his employee Ghulam Murtaza Lashari were sentenced to life imprisonment by the ATC on June 7, 2013 which found them guilty of murdering university student Shahzeb Khan on December 25, 2012 after he quarrelled with them.