Theft of Rs2,500: Man gets bail after spending year in jail

SCBA chief pleads for urgent changes in domestic criminal justice system

ISLAMABAD: A man who spent a year in jail has obtained bail in connection with a robbery case involving the theft of Rs2,500.

The apex court’s two-judge bench, headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmad, granted bail to an accused named Afzal, along with two other accomplices, who had allegedly waylaid a man and robbed him of Rs2,500.

This incident occurred on January 28 in 2015 but the FIR was registered on February 3 under sections 392, 297 and 411 of PPC at Fateh Sher police station in Sahiwal district.

Siddique Khan Baloch, the counsel for the accused, contended that the delay in the lodging of the FIR was inexplicable. He said that the subsequent recovery of Rs1,000 from the accused and a pistol was of no consequence, because there was no description of the currency in question.

However, the additional prosecutor-general, Punjab, and the counsel for the complainant opposed the grant of bail.

But the bench in its two-page-long order ruled that the recovery of Rs1,000 and a 30-bore pistol from the accused was yet to be established.

The court also observed that the FIR showed that the incident took place on January 28 last year while the FIR was lodged on February 3 of the same year. It questioned why the FIR was registered after almost a week’s delay.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th,  2016.