Man accused of murdering wife acquitted after 6 years

Court says insufficient evidence presented against him

RAWALPINDI/ ISLAMABAD: A high court on Monday acquitted a man who had been charged with the murder of his wife six years ago.

This was ordered by a single-member bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), comprising Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani.

Shafaqat had been accused of murdering his wife, Fakhra.

However, the court acquitted him owing to a lack of substantial evidence against him.

Fakhra had been murdered in 2013 within the remits of the Tarnol Police Station. Shafaqat’s brother-in-law had accused him of committing the crime.

Judge Raja Asif had subsequently sentenced Shafaqat to spend life in prison even though his son had testified in his favour.

Alleged drug smuggler acquitted

A divisional bench of Lahore High Court- Rawalpindi bench, on Monday acquitted a suspected drug smuggler and voided the punishment handed to him by a lower court.

The case was presided over by Justice Tariq Abbasi and Justice Shahid Mehmood Abbasi, who heard an appeal filed by the suspect against his 10-year sentence for carrying 10 kilogrammes of narcotics.

During Monday’s proceeding, the suspect’s counsel Advocate Shahzaib Khan argued that the Attock Khurd police had arrested the suspect and took him to the police station where he was allegedly eaten up.

Later, Shahzaib claimed, police allegedly booked the suspect in a false case for carrying narcotics.

However, the drugs presented as evidence did not weigh as much as the police had initially claimed to have recovered from the suspect.

The suspect further contended that a lower court had punished him on the basis of false testimony by a government witness while no other eyewitness of the incident had been listed.

He was acquitted after the court noticed discrepancies in the police report filed against the suspect.

Court proceedings

The district, civil, family, magistrate and special courts have sentenced 10 suspects and acquitted another 15.

The courts also granted physical and judicial remands of 33 and 14 suspects respectively. Furthermore, the court approved bails of 17 suspects while it rejected nine of them. The family courts summoned husbands in 11 cases of divorce and child support.

The properties of eight financial defaulters were ordered to be auctioned while the arrest warrants of three absent suspects along with two police officials were also issued.

Moreover, four suspects were declared as wanted.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th, 2019.