ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Monday held that any private compromise reached between the parties in a murder case at the bail stage, when even a challan had not been submitted before a trial court, should not be accepted as valid.

Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, who authored the judgment which was issued on Monday, also said that trial courts should not accept a compromise where the heirs of the deceased were not willing to abide by any such agreement they might have made earlier.

The judgment came while the bench was deciding an appeal, instituted by Tariq Mehmood against a judgment of the Peshawar High Court’s Abbottabad bench from March 9, 2007.

The controversy cropped up when the appellant — who is the accused in a case registered at the Nara Police Station, in Abbottabad district on Aug 25, 2005 for his alleged role in the murder of Safeer Ahmed — applied for pre-arrest bail before an Abbottabad sessions judge on Sept 3, 2005.


Trial courts asked not to accept a compromise if the heirs of the deceased are not willing to abide by an agreement they may have made earlier


Meanwhile, a sulaahnama (compromise deed) was executed on Sept 12, 2005, also signed by the complainant Naseer Ahmed — the deceased’s brother — saying he had no objection to the confirmation of Tariq Mehmood’s pre-arrest bail or his acquittal in the main case.

Subsequently, the appellant moved an application seeking his acquittal in the case on the basis of the compromise on Feb 28, 2006, but the Abbottabad sessions judge dismissed the application on Aug 30, 2006, because by then the heirs of the deceased had reneged from the compromise.

Tariq Mehmood challenged the decision before the PHC, which also dismissed his appeal on March 9, 2007. It was then that he approached the apex court.

“We have found that the precedent cases on the subject available thus far have not stated the legal position in this respect quite clearly and, therefore, we have decided to make an effort to remove all ambiguities confounding the issue and to state the correct legal position as lucidly as we can,” the judgment explained.

In the case at hand, the judgment held, the high court’s judgment was unexceptionable and completely in accord with the provisions of section 345(2 and 7) of the Criminal Procedure Code (which deals with compounding of an offence), besides being in line with the law clearly declared by the apex court in the 2005 Mohammad Akram case.

“We find ourselves in complete harmony with the legal position declared by this court in the Mohammad Akram case and hold that in all cases covered by CrPC 345(2), no compromise entered into by the parties privately can have any legal sanctity or validity vis-à-vis compounding of the offence unless the court before which the prosecution for the relevant offence is pending grants a formal permission accepting the compromise between the parties,” the judgment explained.

In all such cases, if no prosecution is pending before any court when the compromise is reached, and no permission is granted by the trial court to compound the offence, any privately-reached compromise between the parties cannot be accepted as valid.

“We have found the impugned judgment passed by the high court to be based upon a correct understanding and application of the relevant law and also in accord with the legal position declared by this court in the case of Mohammad Akram and therefore, this appeal is dismissed,” the judgment said.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2016

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