Sarfraz Shah murder case: Park supervisor saw a fearful scene but did not call for help, police

Defence wants to recall three prosecution witnesses for more questioning.

KARACHI:

A park supervisor testifying in the Sarfraz Shah murder case admitted on Wednesday that even though he saw the young man shot and bleeding profusely, he left the scene without calling an ambulance or the police.

The prosecution and defence questioned eyewitness Mohammad Shahid, who works as a supervisor under the Deputy District Officer Parks Abdul Rasheed. The DDO had testified before the court a day earlier.

Shahid told the court that Rasheed had asked him to accompany him to Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Park on June 8 since provincial minister Shazia Marri was due to appear on a television show being filmed there. Shahid was tasked with supervising cleaning and the two men arrived by around 5 pm.

The grisly scene he witnessed still “fills him with fear”, Shahid deposed. As Rasheed and Shahid drove around the park, they saw a plainclothes man dragging another man to the food court. A short while later, as Shahid was speaking to a gardener, he heard the sound of “two shots fired”.

“We reached the spot to see a man covered in blood and bleeding profusely,” Shahid told the court. “I left a few minutes later. At night, my family and I saw footage of what had happened on television channels.”

Hayat asked Shahid whether, as an officer of the park, he had called an ambulance to rescue the injured man, give him any water or inform the police. When Shahid responded in the negative, Hayat suggested that he had been complicit in hiding the incident since it was the “moral and legal duty of citizens to report such crimes to the police”.

Seasoned criminal lawyer MR Sayed asked Shahid whether the police would have been present since Marri was scheduled to be at the park. Shahid replied that he was not responsible for security arrangements.

Sayed then began a line of questioning that was taken up by the other defence lawyers Naimutallah Randhawa and Aamir Warraich. While Sayed suggested that Shahid gave his initial statement to the police on June 13 and not on June 12 as he testified, Randhawa suggested that the statement was written by SI Abdul Haleem.  Randhawa also suggested that the Rangers personnel did whatever was in “line with their duties” and “in good faith”.

Warraich, who is representing Afsar Khan, the man in plainclothes who is accused of dragging Shah, kept his questioning limited to Khan’s involvement. He asked whether Shahid knew if Shah had a fake gun or if he knew of Khan’s profession. “You are responsible. As a supervisor, you should have stopped Afsar Khan [when Shahid saw him dragging Shah],” the lawyer said.

It was otherwise a quiet day at Anti-Terrorism Court I. A power cut at noon cut the proceedings unceremoniously short as well, despite Judge Bashir Ahmed Khoso politely asking the defence lawyers if they could just depose one more witness. They replied that they would rather continue the next morning. One of them, Shaukat Hayat, said that the city court lawyers were on strike and the presence of the defence attorneys in court on Wednesday was already ‘breaking’ the strike.

After the court proceedings were adjourned, lawyers brought up their applications. Randhawa said he has asked for the court to bring back the three witnesses examined on Tuesday -  DDO Parks Abdul Rasheed, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre’s Medico-Legal Officer Dr Ayaz Memon and SI Nasrullah of the Boat Basin police station. Hayat has asked for the court to inspect the site of the incident in the presence of the defence counsel and special public prosecutor.

The court will resume hearing the case at 10:30 am on Thursday.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2011.