Incarcerated: Juvenile, adult accomplice sentenced to 10 years in prison

They had fired at constable Shafiqur Rehman and escaped.

KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) sentenced on Tuesday a juvenile and his adult accomplice to 10 years in prison after they were found guilty of shooting and injuring a policeman two years ago.

Bakhtiar and underage Shakir Khan were arrested in fall 2013 in other cases but were later charged with attempted murder case, following their reported confessions.

According to the prosecution, constable Shafiqur Rehman working with the Railway police was fired at and wounded when he, along with his colleague, was heading home after performing duty. They were riding a motorcycle and as they reached near Habib Public School in Sultanabad, two assailants emerged from a street and opened fire on them. As a result, Rehman received a bullet in his abdomen and fell down while his colleague remained unhurt. Since it was dark, the suspects easily escaped. A case was registered under section 324 (attempting to murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act against unidentified men at the Docks police station.

Nearly a week after the incident, the police arrested Khan for possessing an illicit weapon. He, during interrogation, confessed to injuring the policeman and revealed the name of his absconding accomplice. The Docks police summoned the policeman who remained unhurt in the firing and asked him to identify if the boy was the shooter. The policeman identified him and, a month later, Bakhtiar was also arrested and charged with the crime.

Since Shakir was underage at the time of offence, the court separately tried him as required under the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance. However, their trials ran parallel to each other and were decided together.

The ATC-V judge, Jawaid Alam, who heard the case at length for two years, found both the accused guilty of the offence after scrutinising the evidence put before him. Besides sentencing them to 10 years imprisonment, the judge also imposed a fine of Rs30,000 on both the convicts. In case of failure to pay the fine, they will spend three additional months behind bars. Bakhtiar was further directed to pay Rs50,000 as compensation to the injured policeman.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 12^th, 2015.