KARACHI, Dec 22: An anti-terrorism court acquitted two men in the Orangi Town police station attack case on Wednesday. Judge Arshad Noor Khan of the ATC-3 exonerated Zeeshan , a college student, and Zafar Ikram, an 18-year-old jobless man, from all charges as prosecution failed to bring sufficient evidence against them.

Zeeshan was prosecuted under the Sindh Children Act due to his being a juvenile. The prosecution examined, in all, five witnesses, one of whom turned hostile as he did not identify accused Zeeshan.

According to prosecution, Zeeshan was arrested red-handed after being injured in an explosion caused by a home-made grenade outside the police station on June 13. It was alleged that Zeeshan, carrying the grenade, was heading towards the police station when the device went off and he suffered injuries. He was charged with attempting to blow up the police station.

According to the police, as he was about to enter the station, the police attempted to frisk him on which he fled and the bomb went off and he suffered injuries. Later, the police arrested co-accused Zafar Ikram allegedly on the lead of the injured accused. The police showed two activists of the banned organisation, Abid Iqbal and Rahimullah, as absconders.

According to the defence attorney, the accused was injured when he was passing by the police station. He submitted that the prosecution failed to bring anything on record to connect the accused with the blast.

The judge observed that the investigation of the case was defective and the police failed to collect any incriminating evidence against the accused. The complainant of the case, SI Sikandar Ali, himself investigated the case, though he belonged to the operation wing of the police.

The investigation officer did not collect the relevant pieces of evidence. He did not even send the blood-stained clothes of the injured to the chemical examiner. Besides, the prosecution's claim regarding the affiliation of the accused with either the Sipah-i-Sahaba or the Harkatul Mujahideen Al-Aalmi could also not be established.

The prosecution examined PW Latif, owner of a nursery located by the police station, as an eye-witness who had seen the accused going into the PS and coming out of it. However, he did not identify accused Zeeshan as the attacker.

MASJID RAZA CASE: Judge Haq Nawaz Baloch of the ATC-5 put off the hearing of the Masjid Ali Raza blast case against a worker of the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi till Jan 5 on an application by the defence counsel.