LHC exonerates three murder convicts

Bench rules that medical evidence doesn’t support prosecution.

LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) has overturned the murder convictions of three men, ruling that the forensic evidence in the case did not support the prosecution.

On March 29, 2005, a court in Faisalabad found Muhammad Ishfaq, Abdul Rehman and Abdul Rasheed guilty of shooting and killing Muhammad Sajjad and injuring Asif in an incident in October 2003. Ishfaq was sentenced to death, and the other two to life in prison.

On Saturday, the LHC bench headed by Justice Manzoor Ahmed Malik set aside the sentences. “We are of the considered view that the prosecution has failed miserably to prove its case against the appellants,” said the bench in its ruling.

The judges found that the account of the murder presented by the prosecution was not supported by the medical evidence.

Two pieces of evidence contradicted the prosecution’s case. First, the prosecution had claimed, with the support of two witnesses, that the deceased had been shot in the chin. But according to the post mortem report, the injury on the chin was not caused by a bullet but by a fall.

The prosecution also claimed that the blackening around an injury on the deceased’s body had been caused by a bullet. But according to the medical evidence, the distance between the deceased and the attacker was 13 feet, much beyond the range at which bullet wounds cause blackening.

The bench observed that another lapse in the case concerned two pieces of metal pulled from the victim’s body. These two pieces of metal, presumably bullets, were not sent to the forensic science laboratory along with two guns for expert opinion. “That could have been a very important piece of evidence in this case,” the bench observed.

“The prosecution has to prove its case beyond any shadow of doubt and if any doubt arises from the circumstances of the case, the benefit of the doubt has to go to the accused,” the bench said in its ruling.

“In our view the prosecution case is full of doubts and the appellants are entitled to the benefit of the same not as a matter of grace but as a matter of right. Therefore, by extending them the benefit of the doubt, we allow the appeal; the convictions and sentences recorded by the trial court are set aside. They are acquitted of the charges levelled against them.

They must be released forthwith if not required to be detained in any other case.”

The trial court in Faisalabad had also ordered Ishfaq to pay Rs100,000 and Rehman and Rasheed to pay Rs50,000 each in compensation to the family of the deceased. It had also acquitted co-accused Nasir Ali and Safiur Rehman. All five were named as accused in an FIR registered under sections 302, 324, 148 and 149 of the Pakistan Penal Code at Samundri Sadar police station, Faisalabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2010.