KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court sentenced on Wednesday two brothers to life in prison in a kidnapping for ransom case.

Hazoor Bux and Hussain Bux were found guilty of guarding and providing food to two captives Saad Qaimkhani and his friend Shehryar Arshad following their kidnapping in January, 2011 in New Town for ransom.

The judge of the anti-terrorism court-II pronounced the judgement after recording evidence of witnesses and final arguments from both sides.

The judgement said that both the captives had deposed against the accused that they were guarding them and giving them food at a place of captivity and added that the mobile date record had also corroborated the version of prosecution that ransom was demanded from the families of the victims.

The accused had produced three witnesses in their defence, but they gave different statements and could not shatter the case of the prosecution, thus the charge stood proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, it added.

According to the prosecution, both the young victims — one of them was a son of a director of the Sindh Building Control Authority — were abducted on Jan 18, and the kidnappers demanded a total ransom of Rs30 million from their families.

However, the police managed to arrest the two accused near the 4-K roundabout in New Karachi on March 4 and they led the police party to their house, where a shootout took place in which Rasool Bux, a brother of both the accused, was killed and the captives were recovered, it added.

A case was registered under Sections 365-A (kidnapping for extorting property, etc) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 (e) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 on the complaint of a friend of victims at the New Town police station.

The accused were produced in custody and after extending the benefit of Section 382-B (period of detention to be considered while awarding sentence of imprisonment) of the criminal procedure code, the court remanded them back to prison to serve out the remainder of their sentences.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2014