Murder attempt: Death penalty converted into life imprisonment

ATC had earlier given death sentence to the accused.

LAHORE: A Lahore High Court (LHC) division bench on Wednesday converted death penalty of two convicts into life imprisonment.

Ghulam Raza Naqvi and Zaheer Ahmad had filed an application against their conviction and sentence saying that the trial court had awarded them death penalty ignoring several facts in a case involving an attempt on Maulana Azam Tariq’s life. They said the court had only considered the witnesses produced by the prosecution. They requested the court to set aside their conviction and order their acquittal. An anti-terrorism court in Sargodha had awarded death sentence to them on two counts under Section 302 (murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA). The bench set aside the death penalty awarded under the ATA. It converted the death sentence awarded under the PPC into life imprisonment. The prosecution had accused the convicts of attacking a convoy of Tariq in 1994. His two gunmen were killed in the attack.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2014.