SHC upholds death sentence of murderer

The Sindh High Court on Thursday dismissed the appeals of three convicts and upheld the death punishment of one convict in a murder case.

Mannan was sentenced to death, while Bashir and Yousuf Khan were hand down 10 years’ imprisonment by a District South sessions court for murdering a young man and injuring his father and brother on August 26, 2019.

According to the prosecution, the appellants, along with absconding co-accused, had quarreled with Moosa, his brother Ahmed and father Haji Umar Khan at the seaside in Clifton and killed Moosa and injured his father and brother with knives.

The appellants’ counsel claimed that they were implicated in the case by police at the behest of the complainant party, and that eyewitnesses could not identify the appellants as the incident had occurred at night.

The additional prosecutor general supported the trial court judgment, submitting that incident was seen by six eyewitnesses, including the injured, while one young man was killed in an attack by the appellants and their associates.

A division bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha, after hearing the arguments of the counsel and perusal of the evidence, observed that appellant Manan murdered in a brutal fashion and in cold blood a man in the prime of his life with his future ahead of him in a busy seaside area in front of the public and in front of his father.

The court said the appellants without any apparent reason beyond a quarrel set upon the complainant and his son and seriously injured them through pistol butts and daggers and knives and committed offence for causing injury to them.

It said it does not find that this case based on its own particular facts and circumstances warrants any leniency from it; rather, as was held in the Supreme Court order, a deterrent sentence is justified to deter such mindless murders in front of the public at the seaside where young families go to enjoy themselves rather than being kept away in fear on account of such incidents.

The court further observed that prosecution proved its case against the appellants, and dismissed their appeals and upheld their sentences awarded to them by the trial court for the offences they committed.