ATC acquits Saad Aziz in police encounter case

Police fail to submit sufficient evidence for indictment

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Monday acquitted Safoora carnage prime accused Saad Aziz in a case pertaining to a police encounter and intent to murder for lack of evidence.



Police had claimed that on June 3, 2015, Aziz had attacked police in the area of Samanabad in Gulberg Town in Karachi. According to the police, when they fought back, Aziz fled the scene. A case was registered against the convicted death-row prisoner at the Samanabad police station.

Last month, the Sindh High Court (SHC) also sought further details of the military court’s judgment regarding the conviction of the five terrorists who were involved in the Safoora Goth carnage and Sabeen Mahmud’s murder.

A two-judge bench, headed by Justice Naimatullah Phulpoto, asked defence lawyer Hashmat Habib to submit such details within one month and fixed the matter on a date to be later notified by the office.

A military court had awarded capital punishment in one of the cases to Saad Aziz alias Tin Tin, Tahir Hussain Minhas alias Sain, Asadur Rehman alias Malik, Mohammad Azhar Ishrat alias Majid and Hanif Nazir on May 12, 2016. The Islamic State-inspired group had shot dead 45 members of the Ismaili community in the outskirts of Karachi in May 2015.



The convicts, Aziz, Minhas, Ishrat, Rehman and Nazir, had filed appeals against the sentences awarded to them by the military court.

Their lawyer contended that the petitioners were illegally tried and that too in the absence of any counsel, which was a violation of Article 10 of the Constitution, as they were also not able to communicate during their trial and investigation. On these grounds, their conviction is liable to be set aside, he added.