June 07, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 21, 1428

PESHAWAR, June 6: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of a man by a subordinate court charged with raping a five-year-old girl. A two-member bench, comprising the Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan and Justice Tallat Qayyum Qureshi, dismissed the appeal filed by the convict, Ziarat Gul, observing that the evidence on record was sufficient for the appellant’s conviction.

The bench observed that the appellant did not deserve any leniency.

The appellant was charged in an FIR registered at Lal Qilla police station in Buner district on May 7, 2005.

He was charged with kidnapping a girl of five.

The trial court had convicted him and sentenced him to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.

The state counsel contended that the trial court had rightly convicted him as the evidence on record connected him with the commission of the offence.

Ex-LAC convicted: An accountability court here on Wednesday convicted a former land acquisition collector of Wapda Najmuddin Dar in an accountability reference and sentenced him to four years of rigorous imprisonment besides imposing a fine of Rs2 million.

The court presided over by Mr Khalid Badshah observed that the prosecution had proved its case against the accused.

The bench extended the benefit of Section 382-B of the CrPC to the accused under which the time he had spent in prison before his conviction would be included in his prison term.

The accused, Najmuddin Dar of Gujranwala, had been charged with inflicting a loss of Rs11.63 million to the national exchequer in acquisition of land for construction of a grid station in the Haryana Payan area.

He was appointed as a land acquisition collector for the project.

The National Accountability Bureau (Frontier) had charged him with fixing arbitrary price for the land which resulted in loss to the exchequer.