MULTAN: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Tuesday sent three accused involved in kidnapping and killing of a seven-year-old boy on two-day physical remand and two others to jail for their identification parade.

Abdullah Niaz, a resident of Shah Rukn-i-Alam Colony, went missing and a case was lodged with Shah Rukn-i-Alam police on Jan 21. The accused had demanded Rs10m ransom but killed him before the family could arrange for the ransom amount. The body of the child was recovered from Khanewal.

The judge granted two days physical remand of three, namely Mudasira Naureen, Nasim Akhtar and Niaz Ali, and sent to jail other co-accused, namely Muhammad Saleem and Hassan Javed, for identification parade.

COMMUTED: A two-member bench of the Lahore High Court Multan commuted death penalty of two convicts involved in kidnapping and killing of a boy into life imprisonment.

The convict, Muhammad Ashraf and Faqirullah, had lodged a petition with the court, stating that a case was lodged with Makhdoom Rasheed Police Station on March 3, 2012 over the kidnap and murder case of 14-year old Amir Sohail. The boy was kidnapped for ransom but later killed.

They said an anti-terrorism court had awarded death sentence to them on three counts, imposed Rs0.4m fine and ordered to pay the compensation of Rs0.2m to the heirs of the deceased. They pleaded that they were innocent and there was contradiction in the statements of witnesses about the recovery of the body besides there were flaws in evidences.

They requested the court to relieve them from the case; however, the court converted their death penalties into life imprisonment while upheld the fine and compensation.

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2015

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