Rule of law: Waiting in line

The ATC has many pending cases in different districts.

KARACHI:

At the moment, there are 38 cases pending before the ATC in Hyderabad, 42 in Sukkur, six in Khairpur and one at Shikarpur — these include the Daniel Pearl murder case which is being heard two and a half hours away from Karachi, the place where the Wall Street Journal correspondent was picked up from in front of a restaurant in Saddar.

The first hearing of the case was held inside in Karachi Central Jail on April 5, 2002. The trial is still pending before an ATC in Hyderabad. Ahmed Omer Sheikh, one of the main accused, was sentenced to death. The other co-accused were tracked down and are facing trial.

Along with Pearl’s case, the court’s district benches are also looking at the attack on the convoy of CJ Maqbool Baqar, Nishtar Park bomb blast, 2006 attack on Karachi’s corps commander by Jundullah militants, Allama Hasan Turabi’s assassination in a suicide blast and advocate Naimat Ali Randhawa’s murder trial.

The case relating to the murder of Geo TV’s Wali Khan Babar, in which two of the absconding accused was given the death sentence while others were given life in prison, is also pending as the key accused is still at large. It was transferred to an ATC in Kandhkot.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25^th, 2015.