PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench has set aside death penalty awarded to a convict by a subordinate court for killing a former tehsil nazim of Lahor, Swabi around seven years ago.

The bench comprising Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Qalandar Ali Khan accepted an appeal filed by the convict, Sher Ali, and observed that prosecution could not prove its case against the appellant. The bench acquitted the appellant.

The appellant was tried for killing the then tehsil nazim, Shahroom Khan, during Friday prayers on August 27, 2010. He was convicted by an additional district and sessions judge in Lahor on July 26, 2016, and was sentenced to death and fined Rs500,000.

The prosecution claimed that the appellant was Nazer (land caretaker) with the deceased and killed him due to an altercation between them.

The bench also acquits two in narcotics smuggling case for lack of proper evidence

Advocate Shabir Hussain Gigyani appeared for the appellant and contended that prosecution’s case was full of loopholes and the appellant was falsely implicated in it.

He argued that the record showed that the body of the deceased was taken for postmortem before registration of FIR of the occurrence.

He said that under the law, the first thing the police had to do was to register FIR after which autopsy had to be conducted.

He added that according to prosecution the incident took place during Friday prayers at the family mosque of the deceased, however, neither the prayer leader, nor any other independent witness was produced by the prosecution as eyewitnesses in the case.

He said that the three eyewitnesses produced by the prosecution were relatives of the deceased and they were interested witnesses.

ACQUITTED: The bench also set aside life imprisonment awarded to two persons by a subordinate court on account of narcotics trafficking and acquitted them due to lack of proper evidence.

The prosecution claimed that the two appellants, Sagheer Khan and Fakhre Alam, were boarding a vehicle in the limits of Hayatabad police station on February 21, 2014, when they were stopped by the police. It was alleged that Fakhre Alam managed to escape from the scene of occurrence and was apprehended later on.

Police recovered 249 kilograms of hashish and 11 kilograms of opium from the said car. The appellants were convicted by an additional district and sessions judge. They were sentenced to life imprisonment and fined Rs200,000 each.

The appellants’ counsels argued that the occurrence had taken place at night and the actual suspects decamped from the place of occurrence after which police implicated the appellants in the case.

They stated that the seized contraband was also sent for chemical examination after delay of several days. Moreover, they added that the witnesses recorded conflicting statements before the trial court, but the trial judge ignored those lacunas in the case.

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2017