February 01, 2008	Friday	Muharram 22, 1429

RAWALPINDI, Jan 31: An additional district and sessions judge (ASJ) here on Thursday awarded life imprisonment to two persons who had murdered a man in Peshawar about four years ago.

Judge Khalid Mehmood Ranjha awarded life imprisonment to Imran Ali and Meyva Khan for kidnapping and later murdering Asif Iqbal in 2004 and throwing his body in the gutter. Each convict will also have to pay Rs100,000 fine and in case of non-payment he would have to undergo an extra imprisonment of six months.

According to details, in 2004 the killers hired a car from a rent-a-car at Sadiqabad in Rawalpindi and took the vehicle along with its driver Asif to Peshawar. When they reached their destination, they overpowered the driver and took him inside a house where they tied him up with a charpoy and shot him dead. The killers then escaped with the vehicle.

The father of the deceased lodged an FIR with Sadiqabad police, and investigations led the police to the house in Peshawar where Asif was kept. There they took blood samples from the charpoy, and after carrying out a DNA test, it was found that the samples matched those of Asif.

The killers were later arrested from Peshawar, and they informed the police that they had thrown Asif’s body in a gutter.