KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Tuesday overturned a conviction order of a trial court against a man in a terror financing case.

The SHC observed that all the evidence came up on record was completely unreliable and utterly deficient to prove the charge against the appellant beyond a reasonable doubt.

In December 2020, the ATC-XII had handed down 10 years in prison as well as other sentences to Ghulam Rasool Rabbani, said to be associated with banned Jamaat Ud Dawa (JuD), for collecting funds at a mosque/seminary in a Malir locality in November 2020 for alleged terrorist activities.

The trial court had also ordered forfeit of the mosque/madressah with directions to the administrator of education assets of the education department to take it over as it belonged to the banned organisation.

Bench terms evidence against appellant ‘unreliable, utterly deficient’

The convict through his counsel filed appeal in the SHC against the conviction order of the trial court and after hearing both sides and examining the record and proceedings of the case, the bench comprising Justice K. K. Agha and Justice Zulfiqar Ali Sangi allowed the appeal and set aside the conviction order.

The bench in its judgement observed that the FIR was registered on the basis of an intelligence report (IR), but the IR was not produced by prosecution before the trial court nor it was established that who had prepared the IR and the same person was not called as a witness.

It further noted that the appellant had not been named in the FIR and there was no allegation that he was collecting funds for the proscribed organisation.

The bench stated that as per the IO, he had collected some documents from the wife of the appellant, residing adjacent to the mosque, but she was not produced before the trial court as witness while the IO did not collect any material to establish that the mosque in question belonged to any banned organisation or was being used by it.

The IO had examined two private persons and only one of them was produced before the court as a witness and he had not disclosed a single word in his evidence that the appellant was collecting funds for JuD, it added.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2022