KARACHI: An antiterrorism court on Saturday awarded death sentence to a couple and life imprisonment to a man in a case pertaining to the kidnap-cum-murder of a schoolgirl.

M. Bilal and his wife, Reema, were found guilty of killing 13-year-old Neha after abducting her from her school in Federal B. Area in September 2013 for ransom. The court also found another man, M. Waqar, guilty of helping them in kidnapping her and demanding ransom from her family.

The ATC-II judge handed down capital punishment to the couple on the charges of murder and kidnapping for ransom, while Waqar was sentenced to undergo 25 years in prison.

Besides, the court observed that the victim according to her medical report was also subjected to unnatural offence before being murdered but the investigating officers, Manzoor Wasri and Ali Haider, neither collected the samples nor submitted any interrogation report regarding this offence. The court issued show-cause notices to both the investigating officers.

The court ruled that the murder and kidnap case stood proved beyond a shadow of a doubt since the testimonies of prosecution witnesses remained consistent and were also corroborated by the documentary evidence. It added that the subscribers identity module (SIM), which had been used to demand ransom, was also found in Waqar’s possession.

Two key prosecution witnesses, including a school employee, deposed against the couple before the trial court.

According to the prosecution, Class-IV student Neha, a daughter of Reema’s maternal uncle, was taken away from her school in Federal B. Area on Sept 24 by the couple and they demanded ransom for her safe release. Later, they drowned the teenage girl and her body was found on the Seaview beach a couple of days after the abduction, it added.

The prosecution said that the couple was arrested in Bilal Colony on Sept 28, 2013 and two eyewitnesses picked them out during an identification parade before a judicial magistrate. Waqar was arrested in October as he had made a ransom call to the family of the deceased on Bilal’s directive. The police recovered the mobile phone, which was used for demand of ransom and a motorcycle used in the crime, from the possession of the accused persons, it added.

A Quetta-based suspect was also arrested during the investigation and initially he was claimed to be the main suspect, but he was not chargesheeted as police said that they failed to collect any incriminating evidence against him.

The accused were booked under Sections 365-A (kidnapping for ransom), 302 (premeditated murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 at the Azizabad police station on a complaint of the victim’s father.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2017