KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has set aside the life imprisonment handed down by the trial court to an activist of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in a case pertaining to the murder of six people.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha observed that the retracted judicial confession of the appellant was not made voluntarily and it was more than likely that he was compelled to sign the confession previously prepared by police/Rangers.

An antiterrorism court had sentenced Ahmed Saeed alias Saeed Bharam to life in prison in September 2020 for killing Syed Saeed Ahmed, Syed Tayyab Hussain, Syed Mazhar Hussain, Qari Mohammad Yaqoob, Mohammad Jibran and Mohammad Noman Khan in September 2003 in Azizabad.

The convict, through his counsel, challenged the trial court order before the SHC and after hearing both sides and examining the record and proceedings of the case, the division bench allowed the appeal and overturned the trial court judgement.

Court rules appellant’s confession was not made voluntarily; says apparently he signed confession prepared by police/Rangers

The bench in its judgement said that the appellant in his statement before the trial court denied making any confession before any judicial magistrate and said it was already prepared by the police and only his signature was added on it.

The appellant in the statement alleged that besides him, the confessional statements of Uzair Baloch, Raees alias Mama, Minhaj Qazi and other suspects were also obtained from the same judicial magistrate after booking them for carrying illicit weapons and explosives at the Nabi Bux polices station.

The bench questioned as to why after 13 years of the offence in question he would admit to it knowing that it carried the death penalty when there was not a shred of evidence against him in any such case and this did not appeal to reason, logic or common sense.

“It beggars belief that before the magistrate he was able to write out a 10-page detailed statement in manuscript without any correction and spelling mistakes listing in chronological order all the crimes which he had committed from 1994 to 2016, spanning over the period of around two decades, amounting 47 separate incidents in which he was able to name all of his accomplices on each occasion, the names of victims and time, places and dates of such crimes.

“It is simply not believable that he was able to prepare such a detailed and precise confession of so many murders over a span of 20 years without any kind of diary or other aid. To produce such a list of occurrences as mentioned in his confession you would either have a photographic memory or computer like memory,” the verdict stated.

The bench further noted that it was quite apparent that the list was prepared for him and he was made to sign it and the same was not made voluntarily.

It observed that the eyewitness did not recognise him in court as being present at the time of incident and also contradicted his confession by stating in his evidence that three persons on two motorbikes had escaped after committing the offence while as per the confession four people were specifically named as accused along with 12 others.

The bench in its verdict stated that as per the written statement of the appellant, he was not in Pakistan at the time of some of the murders which he confessed and in some cases his accomplices had already diad before the time of crimes.

It further noted that there were countless significant procedural errors in the recording of the confessional statement as he was handed back to police after the confession instead of sending him to prison and he was not warned that the confession would be used against him as evidence.

“Thus for the reasons mentioned above we find that the retracted judicial confession of the appellant was not made voluntarily and it is more than likely that the appellant signed a confession previously prepared by the police/rangers which he was compelled to sign and the object of such confession was not to tell the truth as is evidenced by the scanty details given in respect of the six murders in this case and the fact that he was abroad during the time when some of the murders which he confessed were committed,” it added.

While discarding the confession, the bench said that there was no other evidence left to connect the appellant to the offence for which he was charged and convicted by the trial court.

According to the prosecution, Saeed Bharam along with his three named and 10 to 12 unidentified accomplices had shot dead the people in indiscriminate firing due to enmity.

Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2022