Teenage rivalry: Suspects accuse victim’s family of blackmail

Lawyers insists Hamza’s father has a habit of filing petitions in court.

KARACHI:

The two suspects nominated in the murder of a teenager, Hamza Ahmed, accused the complainants of implicating them in the case.

On Friday, Shoaib Naveed and Muhammad Arsalan - both of whom were nominated in the murder - said that Hamza’s father was blackmailing them though what they called were false charges. Hamza, 17, was gunned down allegedly by Shoaib’s security guard after a small argument between the two outside a restaurant in DHA on April 27. The two were speaking before a Sindh High Court bench in a petition seeking re-investigation of the murder case by a team of ‘honest’ police officers.

The petition was filed by the victim’s father, Talib Sonail, who claimed that the police’s investigations officer was concealing crucial circumstantial facts from the court to save the suspect. In response, Advocate Mehmood Alam Rizvi, the lawyer representing the suspects, claimed that the victim’s father has a habit of filing applications. He also claimed that the petitioner is blackmailing and harassing the suspects, and pleaded that his petition for reinvestigation should be dismissed.

In response, the lawyer for Hamza’s family, Advocate Wazir Khoso, requested for time to go through the objections raised by the suspects’ counsel and then file a rebuttal. Allowing the request, Justice Ghulam Sarwar Korai, who headed the bench, adjourned the hearing.

History

According to the victim’s family, the investigating officer has concealed crucial circumstantial evidence from the anti-terrorism court that are enough to establish Shoaib’s involvement in the murder.

According to him, the officer had obtained two compact discs containing video footage of the incident captured by the CCTV in DHA but he did not produce them as evidence in court. Secondly, the complainant had requested the officer to call independent witnesses, such as the guard of a nearby beauty salon, an employee of the Latte Lounge and others.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2013.