Verdict upheld: SC maintains acquittal of three men

They had been sentenced to death by an ATC for killing nine people in a sectarian attack

KARACHI: The Supreme Court on Monday maintained the acquittal of three men who were sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) for killing nine people and wounding others in an attack on an imambargah in 2003.

A three-member bench, comprising Justices Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, Amir Hani Muslim and Qazi Faez Isa, dismissed the state's appeals challenging the acquittal of the three men and upheld the high court's verdict.

Muhammad Shaukat, Abdul Wahab Afghani and Shahnawaz alias Shani were awarded capital punishment by Karachi's ATC-II in August 2006. They were also ordered to pay monetary compensation to the families of the nine victims and the survivors.

The alFalah police had alleged that the three men had opened fire at the imambargah in the Salman Farsi Cooperative Housing Society on March 22, 2003.

The Sindh High Court acquitted them of the terrorism and murder charges on September 26, 2011.

The provincial government, through the prosecutor general, challenged their acquittal, arguing that the trial court had rightly convicted the defendants but the high court judges had failed to appreciate the evidence available on the record to connect them to the incident.

During Monday's proceedings, the state prosecutor appeared to be ill-prepared to plead for the appeals, which were subsequently dismissed by the bench. The judges upheld the high court's order of acquitting Shaukat, Afghani and Shahnawaz.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2015.