SC acquits life sentence convict after 11 years

Muhammad Anaar was implicated for murdering the husband of his paramour in 2005

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court acquitted on Friday a murder suspect convicted a decade ago.

Muhammad Anaar was awarded capital punishment by a Mandi Bahauddin sessions judge in a murder case in 2005, which was later converted into life imprisonment by the Lahore High Court (LHC). He had been implicated for murdering the husband of his paramour.

Hearing the suspect’s appeal against the LHC order, a three-judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa ordered his acquittal, giving him benefit of doubt on murder charges.



“The accused are languishing in jails but no one is taking action against fake witnesses,” Justice Khosa observed during the hearing of the case.

The decision comes a week after the top court acquitted a death row prisoner incarcerated for two decades after extending him the benefit of doubt.

The court heard Mazhar Farooq’s five-year-old appeal against the confirmation of his death sentence by LHC in 2009. Farooq, a resident of Kasur, was involved in one Nisar Ahmed’s murder. A case was registered against him in 1992, and he was arrested in 1996.



In October, the apex court had exonerated a man, who was convicted of murder and handed down the death sentence by a sessions court in April 2004, two years after his death. Mazhar Hussain, whose original appeal against the death sentence was turned down by a high court years before, died of coronary failure about two years ago while still in incarceration.