Fakhra Younus case: SHC summons key accused afresh

The accused has failed to appear in court for the last two years despite repeated notices

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) directed on Monday the Punjab police’s inspector-general to ensure service of notice on former Punjab MPA Bilal Mustafa Khar, the key suspect in the Fakhra Younus acid attack case.

Headed by Chief Justice Maqbool Baqar, the bench gave four weeks to the Punjab IG to submit a compliance report. Bilal, the son of former Punjab governor Malik Ghulam Mustafa Khar was acquitted by a Karachi district and sessions court in December 2003 after the prosecution failed to prove that he threw acid on his estranged wife, Fakhra.



The victim’s family had alleged that Bilal threw acid on Fakhra on May 14, 2000, at Napier Road, Karachi and fled.

The witnesses, Fakhra’s brother-in-law and her sister’s mother-in-law, Shahida Malik, did not identify Bilal as the accused.

Fakhra, who shifted to Italy for a plastic surgery after the attack, committed suicide in March 2012.

Twelve years after the case first surfaced, three human rights organisations approached the court to seek justice for the victim’s family.

The petitioners, including the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, Shirkat Gah and Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, claimed that the acquittal on December 16, 2003, came because the four eyewitnesses refused to identify Bilal in the trial court due to his ‘influence’. The trial court had also failed to consider the evidence available on record, they alleged.

The high court was pleaded to summon the entire record relating to Younus’ case from the trial court, examine it and remand it back to the court for a retrial. According to the petitioners’ lawyer, Faisal Siddiqui, the government had enacted the Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act 2011. The case should be re-investigated under these laws, he said.

On Monday, the two judges found the respondent Khar absent from the court despite a notice that was issued to him through the Punjab police IG as he failed to respond to several summons issued to him during the series of hearings in the last two years.

“Let fresh notice be issued to the respondent through all possible modes,” ordered CJ Maqbool Baqar. “The notice should also be issued through the Punjab Police IG with a direction to him to ensure that the same is served and service report is submitted within four weeks from today,” the bench added.

The hearing was adjourned till January 26.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2014.