Lahore High Court’s Justice Ali Zia Bajwa has acquitted a man sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of killing his wife in the name of honour, citing failure of the police to collect independent and strong corroborative evidence against him.
A 20-page judgment issued on an appeal filed by Muhammad Faisal against the trial court’s order of handed down life imprisonment to him for allegedly killing his wife Shabana.
“I have minutely scrutinised the record and carefully examined the prosecution evidence, which leads me to observe that no independent and strong corroborative evidence is available on the record to warrant the conviction of appellant. Even otherwise, the whole case of prosecution was primarily founded on the strength of extra-judicial confession and wajtakkar (chance witness) evidence, both of which have miserably failed to secure any credence on the accepted legal parlance,” the judge declared. “The impugned judgment appears to have been passed merely on conjectures without taking into account scores of weaknesses in the prosecution's case.”
Shedding light on the acquittal of five accused who had been acquitted by the trial court, Justice Bajwa observed that “it is well established law that if the prosecution evidence is disbelieved against the few accused facing trial, court is competent to reject such evidence. In these circumstances when the evidence to the extent of acquitted co-accused has already been disbelieved by learned trial court, it cannot be believed against the appellant unless supported by any independent corroborative evidence”.
The investigation officer secured a blood-stained mattress and soil from the place of occurrence on October 21, 2015, four days after the alleged murder, but the autopsy report showed no injury found on the body.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 13th, 2021.
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