KARACHI, Oct 25: An anti-terrorism acquitted on Thursday a worker of the Sunni Tehreek of the charge of illegally occupying and damaging a mosque on Burnes Road.
Judge Syed Zakir Husain of the ATC-1 acquitted Shaukat Ali Qadri of all charges for “want of evidence as to the crime and commission thereof, in the interest of justice.”
The Artillery Maidan police had registered a case against five workers of the Sunni Tehreek under various sections of PPC on the complaint of Akhlaq Ahmed.
The complainant reported to police that on Sept 11 Waseem informed him about illegal occupation of Sunehri Masjid by workers of the Sunni Tehreek, who announced that they would not hand over the possession of the mosque, until the administration put them in possession of Masjid-i-Bilal at New Sabzimandi.
Akhlaq Ahmed further reported that people had assembled outside the occupied mosque, and they were determined to enter the mosque to flush out the occupants when he reached there.
The complainant, with the members of the mosque’s committee, reached the police station and took a police party to the mosque.
However, people had already taken over the possession of the mosque, and the occupants had fled the scene when police reached the spot. The people allegedly caught the accused, Shaukat Ali Qadri, and handed him over to police.
According to the prosecution, the accused during interrogation disclosed the names of his absconding accomplices as Shahzad alias Babu, Mohammed Tariq, Aman and Akram Qadri.
Police submitted final the charge-sheet against accused Qadri, showing four other accused as absconders on Sept 20 in the court. On Oct 15 police submitted another charge-sheet in which the names of the absconders were deleted from the case for want of evidence.
The prosecution examined two residents of Burnes Road, the complainant, and three police officials, including the investigation officer, against the accused.
None of the three private witnesses - two residents and the complainant - deposed to have witnessed either the forcible occupation of the mosque or the arrest of the accused, as they were sleeping in their houses at the time of the alleged incident.
The judge observed: “It is pointed out that none of the said private witnesses is the eyewitness to the alleged incident. The complainant even did not see the accused being apprehended as, according to him, the people had already taken over the possession of the mosque and apprehended the accused before he reached the spot. The other witnesses, having seen no incident with their own eyes, are helpless to the prosecution for the purpose in question, for their evidence does not carry any weight in the absence of direct evidence in the matter.”
HE FURTHER OBSERVED: “The evidence of the official witnesses is also of no use. The same alone does not fill in the gap of the prosecution’s case.”
