LHC overturns death sentence in woman's murder case

The Lahore High Court (LHC) has acquitted a man sentenced to death for allegedly murdering a young woman who had rejected his marriage proposal, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt.

A two-judge bench comprising Justice Shahram Sarwar and Justice Sardar Ali Akbar Dogar set aside the 2022 death sentence awarded to Muhammad Hussain by a Sargodha trial court.

The bench issued an eight-page detailed judgment allowing Hussain's appeal.

Prosecutors had accused Hussain of shooting the woman three times at the gate of a hospital after she refused to marry him. However, the court observed that the investigation and evidence presented suffered from "serious gaps and inconsistencies."

According to the judgment, the prosecution failed to explain a seven-hour delay in the post-mortem examination.

The court also questioned the testimony of the victim's mother, who stated that she, her husband, and the deceased had travelled by rickshaw to purchase medicine — a detail the judges termed "incomprehensible" for a minor medical errand involving four people.