May 01, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 24, 1429

KARACHI, April 30: An anti-terrorism court on Wednesday sentenced an accused to death and co-accused to life imprisonment in a kidnapping for ransom and murder case.

Judge Haq Nawaz Baloch of ATC-V, who was conducting the trial, pronounced the verdict after recording final arguments from both sides.

The court found Sohail and Zainab guilty of kidnapping and killing Mohammad Naveed and awarded death sentence and life imprisonment to the accused, respectively.

The judge also sentenced the killers to five years in prison and fined them Rs50,000 each for creating terror in the area by committing the crime.

The judgment observed that the prosecution successfully proved that Sohail and Zainab had kidnapped Mohammad Naveed with the help of their associate, Mohammad Asif, for ransom and later killed him when the ransom was not paid.

Both the accused had recorded their confessional statements before a judicial magistrate while their data of phone calls proved that the accused and the deceased had contacted each other before the incident, it added.

According to the prosecution, Sohail lived in Gulshan and wanted to marry Zainab but his family opposed the match. Mohammad Naveed and Zainab worked in the marketing department of an office and were said to be fond of each other.

On Sept 9, 2007, Naveed was kidnapped from the limits of City Courts police station. The kidnappers contacted the victim’s brother, Mohammad Nadeem, and demanded Rs80 million as ransom, warning that they would kill the kidnap victim if the ransom amount was not paid.

After some time, one of the family members of the kidnapped victim saw a picture of Naveed at an Edhi centre. The staff present there told him that police had recovered the body from Malir police limits. On the complaint of Nadeem, a case (FIR 94/2007) was registered at the City Courts police station under Sections 365-A and 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 of the Anti-terrorism Act.

Police traced the accused through the calls they had made to the complainant demanding ransom and arrested them on October 26, 2007.

In the charge-sheet submitted in court, the investigation officer stated that Sohail and Zainab had kidnapped Naveed and later killed him with the help of Mohammad Asif. The co-accused, Mohammad Asif, was declared absconder in the case.

Defence counsel Mushtaq Ahmed, in his final arguments, said that his clients were innocent and were implicated in the case. He said confessional statements of the accused were recorded without completing some legal formalities.

Besides, he argued that the evidence produced by the prosecution in court was only of government officials and no independent evidence had been brought forth. He said the prosecution had failed to prove its case. He pleaded for the acquittal of his clients.

The special public prosecutor said that the prosecution had produced enough evidence to prove the involvement of the accused in the case. Stating that both the accused had voluntarily recorded their confessional statements before the judicial magistrate, he demanded the death penalty for the accused.

The court examined 16 prosecution witnesses, including Judicial Magistrate Mohammad Asif, a medico-legal officer, an investigation officer, executives of two cellular phone firms and other police officials.