KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Tuesday set aside conviction in the Shahzeb Khan murder case after ruling that the offence was not an act of terrorism and sent the case to a sessions court for a retrial.
An antiterrorism court had sentenced Shahrukh Jatoi and his friend Nawab Siraj Ali Talpur to death in June 2013 and two other co-accused got life imprisonment for killing 20-year-old Shahzeb Khan, son of DSP Aurangzeb Khan, on Dec 25, 2012 near his home in Karachi’s Defence area.
The then chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, had taken suo motu notice of the incident that had sparked widespread outrage across the country through newspapers, TV channels and social media.
The incident also triggered a widespread debate over whether the country’s elite could be held accountable for crimes they committed as the prime accused belonged to powerful feudal families of Sindh.
The convicts filed appeals in the SHC against conviction while Shahrukh had also filed a criminal review application contending that he was a juvenile person at the time of the offence.
On Tuesday, a two-judge SHC bench headed by Justice Salahuddin Panhwar set aside the conviction order of the ATC.
The bench in its order observed that it was a case of personnel vendetta and the relevant section of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), 1997 was misapplied by the police, thus, the trial was not proper.
Therefore, the bench ruled that the impugned judgement was set aside and the case was remanded back to an ordinary court (sessions court) for trial.
The SHC also said that the sessions court would be competent to deicide a compromise reached between the appellants and the victim’s families as well as other applications.
Earlier, Advocate Farooq H. Naek appeared on behalf of the convict Shahrukh and contended that his client was a juvenile at the time when the crime was committed. Therefore, he added, he could not be tried under the antiterrorism law.
The Sindh prosecutor general, Shahadat Awan, informed the bench that during the pendency of appeals the complainant party approached the SHC and pardoned the convicts, adding that on the directive of the high court the trial court had also verified the compromise and reported it back to the SHC in September 2014.