Qandeel’s brother gets life term, 6 others acquitted

MULTAN: A Multan model court has sentenced Qandeel Baloch’s brother to life imprisonment and acquitted Mufti Abdul Qavi and five other suspects in the social media star murder case on Friday.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has welcomed the sentence, saying it is against the past traditions in which family members mutually pardoned each other. The model court awarded life term to Waseem Azeem and acquitted Mufti Abdul Qavi and Qandeel’s two brothers Aslam Shaheen and Arif, taxi driver Abdul Basit and Zafar. Shaheen was charged with instigating Waseem to kill the celebrity but the charge could not be proved and the court declared him not guilty. He had been arrested from Saudi Arabia with the help of the Interpol.

Waseem had initially admitted to the crime but later changed his statement. The court had been hearing the case for three years. A high court had dismissed his bail applications twice. The court had reserved its verdict after the defence and the prosecution completed their arguments on Thursday. The murder trial had taken several turns since it was started. The accused family members tried to reconcile the murder matter mutually but the court did not allow it. Qandeel’s father had filed a petition seeking pardon for his sons but the court turned it down. The petition affidavit said that the anti-honour killing law (Criminal Amendment Bill 2015) which prevented killers from walking free after being pardoned by the victim’s family was passed months after Baloch was murdered and, therefore, cannot be applied to her case. Qandeel's father Muhammad Azim Baloch had filed his pardon appeal on August 21, but the court rejected it on August 22.

Azim Baloch had lodged a murder complaint with the Muzaffarabad police against his son Waseem, accomplices Haq Nawaz and others. An affidavit submitted by the parents in 2016 also named two other sons, Aslam Shaheen and Arif. The accused, Waseem, had confessed before a special magistrate to intoxicating his sister Qandeel and then strangling her. The mother of Qandeel was also present in the court. During the hearing, 35 witnesses were called to record their statements.

Talking to journalists, Mufti Qavi said he was deliberately being maligned in this case. He said once the verdict of the court was announced, those who were innocent would be acquitted while the suspects would be convicted. He said his name was not added in the First Information Report (FIR) on Qandeel’s murder, and he was being trapped for a crime he was not associated with.

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Council Member Nazir Ahmed has welcomed the court verdict. He said the amended law on honour killing helped in the conviction of the accused. The model court verdict would set a trend for future that honour killings cannot be pardoned. Nazir was of the view that the verdict would reduce honour killings in the future.