KARACHI, May 27: A sessions court on Friday handed down death sentence to three men in a murder case.

Mohammad Ilyas, Sagheer Ahmed and Mohammad Yousuf were found guilty of killing 13-year-old Sajjad Nawaz within the remit of the Darakhshan police station in March 2001.

The court also directed the convicts to pay Rs100,000 each to the legal heirs of the deceased person as compensation.

Additional district and sessions judge (south) Abdul Razzaq pronounced the judgment after recording evidence of witnesses and final arguments from both sides.

In his verdict, the judge observed that the prosecution examined seven witnesses and all of them fully implicated the accused persons in the case.

One of them, Mohammad Ilyas also recorded his confessional statement before a judicial magistrate under Section 164 of the criminal procedure court admitting his guilt and revealed the roles of the co-accused, the verdict said, adding that the medical reports also corroborated the evidence of witnesses.

The verdict concluded that the prosecution had successfully proved its case against the accused men beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The court also found all the accused persons guilty under Section 380 (theft in dwelling-house, etc) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and sentenced them to seven years in jail and imposed a fine of Rs10,000 each. In case of default, they would have to suffer an additional six-month imprisonment, it said.

According to the prosecution, Mohammad Ilyas was a servant at the house of the complainant, Dr Ajlal Babar, located in the Defence Housing Authority. On March 4, 2001, Dr Babar and his family went for a picnic and Ilyas, along with his two accomplices.

The accused persons picked up an underage vendor from Sea View and brought him into the house.

They killed him and set the body alight. When the complainant retuned home, he found the house robbed of cash, jewellery and other valuables. He also saw the body that was beyond recognition.

The prosecution further stated that the police inspected the place of incident and found Ilyas’s watch beside the body, which indicated that the victim was killed when he possibly put up resistance.

The police managed to arrest the accused a few days after the incident and recovered the looted cash and other valuables.

During interrogation, they told the police that they had planned to commit the robbery and in order to deceive the house inmates and the police they killed the boy and torched his body.

A case (FIR No.51/2001) was registered under Sections 302 (punishment for qatl-i-amd), 380 and 34 (common intention) of the PPC at the Darakhshan police station on the complaint of Dr Babar.

Accused Sagheer was produced in court while the other two accused were on bail and following the pronouncement of order they were taken into custody and sent to jail along with the conviction orders.