KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court dismissed on Tuesday an application of the defence seeking transfer of the DHA shootout case to a regular court.

Salman Abro, a son of a senior police officer, along with five police guards of his father has been booked for allegedly killing his 18-year-old classmate Suleman Lashari and wounding his private guard after breaking into his house on the night of May 8 in Defence Housing Authority. He also sustained wounds and one of his guards was killed in an exchange of gunfire.

The defence lawyer had moved an application under Section 23 (power to transfer cases to regular courts) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

Know more: Shootout in DHA leaves teenage boy and police guard dead, two wounded

After hearing arguments from both sides, Judge Saleem Raza Baloch of the ATC-III dismissed the application.

After examining the FIR, record of the case and surrounding circumstances, the court observed that it was not a simple crime.

It observed that the suspects were alleged to have entered the house of the complainant in odd hours of night and they carried out incriminating firing at the gate, trespassed in the house and caused gunshots wounds to two persons and one of them died.

The court ruled that the place of incident was not an ordinary place, but a “well-civilised area where people of high personalities lived and apparently a sense of insecurity had been spread not only in a particular community, but in the whole area and the public while the act also destabilised the society at large”.

Disagreeing with the defence lawyer over rulings of the higher judiciary the counsel filed during his arguments, the court observed that the precedents were distinguishable from the facts and circumstances of the present case.

The instant case having nexus with Section 6 (j) of the ATA fell within the jurisdiction of the ATC and was to be proceeded by this court, the judge concluded.

Meanwhile, the complainant informed the judge again that despite a court order he and his family were still without proper security.

A report submitted on behalf of the assistant inspector general (AIG-Legal) said that a police guard had been provided to the complainant.

The lawyers for the complainant, Mohammad Khan Buriro and Mubashir Mirza, said that their application was still pending about contempt of court proceedings against the AIG for not providing proper security to the family of the slain student.

They asked the court to initiate contempt proceedings.

The court also observed that the existing security arrangement was insufficient and granted two days when public prosecutor Abdul Maroof requested it to not issue a contempt notice and sought time to upgrade the security.

Another application of the complainant side challenging the findings of a report about an ossification test which declared the prime suspect an underage person was pending before the court and likely to be taken up for hearing on Sept 15.

According to the prosecution, the main suspect along with the police guards — Yasin Jamali, Imran Ali, Maqbool Brohi, Mohammad Rashid and Zaheer Ahmed — broke into the house of the victim, opened fire on his guard at the main entrance and then fired at Suleman Lashari leaving him critically wounded. In the meantime, the wounded guard and some family members of the victim returned fire that left constable Zaheer dead and Salman Abro also sustained bullet wounds, it added. Later, Suleman Lashari died.

A case was registered under Sections 302 (premeditated murder), 324 (attempted murder), 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupee) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 of the ATA on a complaint of the brother of the deceased at the Darakhshan police station.

The police had added Section 457 (lurking house-trespass or house-breaking by night in order to commit offence punishable with imprisonment) of the PPC in the charge-sheet against the suspects after determining that the suspects barged into victim’s house with intent to kill him.

Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2014