HYDERABAD, July 9: The defence counsel for the co-accused in Daniel Pearl kidnapping and murder case, Rai Basheer Ahmed, prayed to the Anti-terrorism Court (ATC) Judge, Syed Ali Ashraf Shah, here on Tuesday that his clients were entitled to benefit of doubt.

The counsel, after presenting more anomalies and discrepancies with regard to the evidences, produced by the prosecution, and statements of its witnesses, claimed that it could not be ruled out that the prosecution might have falsely implicated the co-accused in the case.

He was continuing with his arguments when the hearing was put off till Wednesday.

Briefing newsmen after the proceedings, Mr Ahmed revealed that he told the court that nothing incriminating had been recovered from the co-accused.

He said that the prosecution witness (PW), Muhammad Iqbal, had admitted having recovered text of e-mails from Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil on Feb 10 while the memo of recovery shows the date as Feb 11. Similarly, he added, the FBI agent, John Moligan, had claimed that the video cassette, containing Pearl’s murder film, was sent on Feb 22 while the investigation officer (IO) insisted that police had received the cassette a day earlier.

The counsel pointed out that such discrepancies were noted in connection with the recovery of scanner, printer, cash memos, laptop, e-mail records etc produced as evidences against the co-accused.

Mr Ahmed said that there was no proof that Fahad Naseem lived at Noman Grand City as claimed by the prosecution. He pointed out that in all the documents, his residence was shown as Gulshan-i-Iqbal.

He argued that police did not arrest until Feb 28 the people using the mobile phone connection of Daniel Pearl in spite of the fact that he was kidnapped on Jan 23. The record, he added, showed that the connection was also in the name of one, Shafi Mohammed Pathan, and not Mr Pearl.

Turning to the evidence of a camera, allegedly used to take snaps of Mr Pearl for the purpose of sending them to different organizations, the counsel pointed out that the camera had not been recovered as yet. Thus, he said, the accused could not be connected with the offence or convicted.

Discussing the legal status of the FIR of the case, the counsel referred to the statement of PW, Aslam Jat, the head munshi of the concerned police station, that Mrs. Pearl’s complaint was handed over to him by the SHO. He said that the SHO did not depose that he had given the complaint to Aslam Jat for the registration of the FIR.

“It is a settled theory that a witness can speak lie but circumstances can not,” the counsel concluded.

The defence counsel would produce case law to substantiate his arguments on Wednesday.