KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has set aside the death sentence handed down to a man by the trial court in the murder of a seven-year-old child.

The SHC observed that it found numerous doubts in the case of the prosecution and the appellant was entitled to the benefit of the doubt not as a concession but as a matter of right.

An antiterrorism court had sentenced Rizwanullah Khan to death in November last year for killing Mohammad Ranbail Khan after abducting him from a park near his house in Bilal Colony in Korangi Industrial Area in July 2020.

However, the convict, through his lawyer, challenged the capital punishment before the high court and after hearing both sides and examining the record and proceedings, a two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha allowed the appeal and exonerated the appellant.

The bench in its verdict stated that this was a very heinous offence as a minor boy had been abducted, raped and murdered in a brutal manner, but the court had to put such aspects aside and decide the guilt or innocence of the appellant by dispassionately assessing the available evidence.

After reassessment of the evidence, the court said that it found that the prosecution could not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt against the appellant.

The bench further noted that there was no eyewitness as well as no last seen witness in the case and thus, the case of appellant was based on circumstantial evidence.

The confession of the appellant made before the police was inadmissible and it would not appeal to the logic that the appellant would confess to a crime when there was no evidence against him and he had only been arrested on mere suspicion, it added.

It also observed that the police found a skull, some bones and teeth and it casted doubt whether these were of the victim boy. It said in usual course a body did not decompose to such a state within 17 days while the DNA report was also not 100 per cent certain about the identity of the remains in question.

The cause of the death was not established, no evidence was available about rape and there was also no evidence that the murder and abduction were made with a design to create terror as such the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 were not applicable in the case, it added.

The judgement further noted that the appellant had no motive to abduct and murder the victim while he claimed enmity with the complainant due to an old family dispute.

Keeping in view the law in respect of circumstantial evidence, the prosecution had failed to create an unbroken chain in order to establish its case, it concluded.

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2023