KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Thursday upheld the life imprisonment handed down to two men by a trial court in a kidnapping for ransom case.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha observed that there might be some technical defects in the case of prosecution, but this did not dent its case.

The court dismissed the appeals by “adopting a dynamic approach without causing miscarriage of justice”.

An antiterrorism court had sentenced Mohammad Ayub and Bakhat Ali to life in prison in February 2020 for guarding and feeding captives Takreem-ul-Haq, Faizan and Shariq, who had been abducted for ransom by their absconding accomplices in February 2014 near Northern Bypass.

Court gives verdict by ‘adopting a dynamic approach without causing miscarriage of justice’

Both the convicts through their counsel challenged their conviction before the SHC and after hearing both sides and examining the record and proceedings, the division bench dismissed their appeals and maintained the verdict of the trial court.

The bench in its order stated that the captives were held for 16 days and they had ample opportunity to identify the persons who were guarding and providing them food.

It said the victims had rightly picked out the appellants during the identification parade before a judicial magistrate.

Essentially, both the appellant were guarding the captives, involved in making ransom demands and occasionally providing food to abductees in the absence of two underage accused persons, it added.

However, the bench noted that as per the evidence available on record, it was an organised gang and each member played a different role to a greater or lesser extent, but a successful kidnapping for ransom could not be carried out without the active participation of all members of the gang.

“As such in our view they are all liable in this joint criminal enterprise of kidnapping for ransom whether they actually snatched the abductee, drove him, guarded him, collected ransom etc. As such through their respective roles of driver, guard, cook, accepting the ransom etc the appellants are a part of the kidnapping gang who all participated in the kidnapping,” it said.

The verdict further said that there were some discrepancies in the evidence of captives, but the same did not regard as enough to affect the case of prosecution especially as they endured a very traumatic experience.

“Thus, even if we find that there may be some technical defects in the prosecution case we do not find that such defects have dented the prosecution case and by adopting a dynamic approach without causing miscarriage of justice for the reasons mentioned above we hereby dismiss the appeals of the appellants,” it concluded.

According to the prosecution, on Feb 2, Takreem along with his two friends was going for a dinner when their vehicle was intercepted at Northern Bypass by three armed men. They snatched all their valuables and abducted them. The kidnappers had used mobile phones of two captives to demand a ransom of Rs7 million and 40 tola gold for their release, it added.

The prosecution further said that the Rangers had raided a house in Khadim Solangi Goth and got the captive released and arrested two accused.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2022