KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has set aside life imprisonment awarded to a man by a trial court in a robbery and murder case.

An additional district and sessions court had sentenced Wajiuddin to life in prison in September 2019 for killing security guard Mohammad Pannah at a food outlet in North Karachi in September 2014 during an attempted robbery and also taking away the victim’s pistol.

The appellant filed an appeal against the trial court verdict, and after hearing both sides and examining the record and proceedings of the case, a single-judge bench headed by Justice Aftab Ahmed Gorar allowed the appeal and overturned the conviction order.

The bench in its order observed that the manager of the food outlet was the complainant of the case, but not an eyewitness while the only eyewitness produced by the prosecution was Ghulam-un-Nabi, who was not associated as a witness of the case and his presence was also not mentioned in the FIR.

The eyewitness was called at a belated stage of the trial as a witness by moving an application under Section 540 of the Criminal Procedure Code which created doubt and the prosecution said the victim sustained two bullet injuries, but the record did not reflect that the weapon or bullet casings had been produced before the trial court, it added.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2020