KARACHI, Nov 30: A sessions court on Tuesday sentenced a man to life imprisonment and acquitted three others in a case pertaining to the kidnapping and murder of a free-will couple.

The court found Mohammad Waris guilty of abducting his niece, Safoora, and her husband, Nadeem Hussain, and abetting the murder of the latter in Dec 2007 within the remit of the Mithadar police station. The couple contracted court marriage in June 2007 in Gujarat.

However, three co-accused — Mushtaq Ahmed, Mohammad Altaf and M Saleem Akhtar — were acquitted for want of evidence.

Additional District and Sessions Judge (south) Abdul Razzaq pronounced his verdict after recording the evidence of witnesses and final arguments from both sides.

The court sentenced Waris to life imprisonment on charges of abetment in the murder under Section 302 (b) read with Section 109 (abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The convict was directed to pay Rs100,000 to the legal heirs of the deceased and in case of default he would have to undergo an additional six-month imprisonment.

He was also sentenced to 10 years in prison on two counts under Section 364 (kidnapping in order to murder) of the PPC for kidnapping the couple. The court imposed a fine of Rs50,000 and in case of non-payment of fine, the convict would have to spend three months in prison.

However, the court ruled that “the substantive sentences will run concurrently and the sentences of fine will run consecutively”.

As per the evidence that came up on record, accused Waris had voluntarily recorded his confessional statement before the court of a judicial magistrate, the verdict said, adding that retracted confession created strong circumstantial evidence against the accused and brought into surface the manner in which the murder was committed.

It stated that the time of death as reported in the post-mortem report being confirmatory piece of evidence was also in consonance with the prosecution case.

The judge wrote in the verdict that the contention of a defence lawyer that the prosecution examined two fake eyewitnesses was pointless as the court had already discarded their evidence and without giving any importance to those witnesses the chain of circumstances were overwhelmingly and convincingly interlocked with each other against the accused.

“Though in the confessional statement the accused has tried to save him from the offence of the murder by an overt act, nevertheless, being participant in the offence of the abduction he is also liable as the abettor in crime of murder,” the judge observed.

The verdict said that though the co-accused had been charged with conspiring the murder by providing assistance to the main accused, the confessional statement of Waris was totally silent about their roles, thus it could not be used against them.

The evidence of two men being examined as eyewitnesses by the prosecution was discarded since they failed to give any feature of the accused and as per the investigation officer, they declined to identify the accused if the identification parade was held, besides the prosecution had failed to justify or explain as to why the witnesses remained silent for many months after the incident, the verdict added.

“Amazingly all three accused persons were taken together by the IO of the pointation of the place but none of them could point the exact location of the same, presumes thereby, they were never been taken for such pointation by the investigation officer,” the verdict concluded.

The court directed the investigation officer to submit a separate charge-sheet if a clue to the murder or the body of Safoora was traced out.

According to the prosecution, the couple contracted court marriage in Gujarat and due to the pressure of the woman's relatives they left their hometown and moved to Karachi. They were residing along with one of the relatives of Nadeem in Railway City Colony within the remit of the Mithadar police station and on Dec 15, 2007 the accused along with their absconding accomplices kidnapped the couple. The body of Nadeem was found the following day in Hyderabad and later it was buried in Edhi graveyard due to want of legal heirs, it added.

On June 26, 2009 the IO along with a brother of deceased Nadim went to the Edhi centre where they identified the photo of the deceased's body, but the body could not be traced out as heavy rain wiped out the allocated grave number, it added.

The police arrested Waris in June 2009 in Lahore and he led the police to Hyderabad where they handed over the couple to two paid killers, Zafar and Anwer. The accused disclosed that he with the help of Mohammad Afzal, Munawar and Shahid kidnapped the couple and handed them over to the paid killers and later he came to know that they killed Nadeem in the hills of Kotri and also killed Safoora at an unknown place. Later, the police also arrested the co-accused.

A case (FIR 31/2009) was registered under Section 302 (premeditated murder), 365 (abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the deceased's brother at the Mithadar police station.