Security challenges: Wali Babar murder trial to be heard in Kandhkot now

Sindh govt made the request to SHC CJ after threats to witness, prosecutor.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court chief justice Maqbool Baqar has transferred the murder trial of journalist Wali Babar Khan to Kandhkot, due to security threats to witnesses, prosecutors and the investigators.

The case was being heard at an anti-terrorism court in Karachi. Last week, the advocate general had informed a three-member bench of the Supreme Court that the government has decided to relocate the trial proceedings to ensure that the killers  are prosecuted.

Officials in the high court told The Express Tribune on Friday that the police had suggested the home department relocate the trial proceedings from Karachi to any other city in the province, in view of threats to the witness, the state prosecutor, the complainant party and the police investigators themselves.



Subsequently, the home department had made a formal request to the chief justice, who is the relevant authority, to order transfers of proceedings from the special anti-terrorism court of Karachi to one in Shikarpur.

A government law officer, who was part of the process, confirmed that the chief justice had ordered the transfer. “Instead of Shikarpur, the trial proceedings have been transferred to Kandhkot,” said the official.

Trial delays

Wali Khan Babar was killed on January 13, 2011, when unknown men opened fire on his car in the limits of Super Market police station. The trial, which was  supposed to be completed within seven days according to the terms of Section 23 of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, has been moving at snail’s pace. This was mostly because the seven persons directly linked to the case were brutally murdered one by one.

Last month, senior lawyer Naimat Ali Randhawa, who had recently taken up Wali’s murder trial, was also gunned down by unknown assailants while his young son sustained bullet wounds in North Nazimabad.

Indictment

Five men - including Faisal Mahmood alias Nafsiati, Syed Mohammad Ali Rizvi, Shahrukh alias Mani, Naveed alias Polka and Shakil alias Malik - have already been charged with the murder by the anti-terrorism courts.

So far, six witnesses - including police informer Rajab Ali Bengali, constable Asif Rafiq, head constable Arshad Kundi and Super Market police station SHO’s brother Naveed Khan - have been murdered. In the wake of looming threats, the provincial government recently decided to change the place of the trials, showing its commitment to get the perpetrators of the murder prosecuted.

The trial proceedings will resume on November 12.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th,2013.