KARACHI: Thousands of criminal trials, including 3,000 related to terrorism, may suffer serious blows as important evidence that remained ‘undamaged’ in malkhana’s fire on the premises of the City Courts about three months ago have been dumped in the ‘wreckage’, it emerged on Sunday.

During a recent visit it was found that the police had sealed a portion of the British-era building, located on the premises of the large judicial complex, where a huge fire broke out in the wee hours of April 11.

The burnt portion of the storehouse, which is situated just few feet away from the City Courts police station inside the judicial complex, was cordoned off from three sides by erecting tents.

The policemen stood guard next to the site, where the piles of the remnants of the burnt case properties mixed with the rubble of the caved in roof of the portion had been dumped around it.

Four days after the incident, special teams of the bomb and forensic experts had entered the burnt portion to remove debris from the spot, the then DIG of Karachi-South Zone Azad Khan had told reporters, adding that three teams of bomb experts belonging to police, Rangers and Pakistan Army had taken part in the work.

‘Prosecution dept has asked police for actual number of case properties destroyed’

Officials told Dawn that those case properties such as explosive materials, arms and ammunitions and other articles that remained safe and were still identifiable were kept in a container placed close to the site of the fire.

Those unidentifiable or destroyed properties have been dumped at the site. However, a close examination suggested that it still contained dozens of the case properties and other material related to hundreds of the cases and trials.

There were dozens of the files of the cases and logbooks that had not been damaged by the fire, but the same were dumped in the trash.

The piles of the wreckage also contained hundreds of the empties of the bullets of different sizes and burnt magazines of the small guns, probably the TT or 9mm pistols, including one probably of the AK-47 Kalashnikov.

There were also several articles such as photography and filmmaking cameras of old models, video tapes, several video CDs, picture albums, some embroidered clothes and dozens of packets of playing cards.

Most importantly dozens of small case properties — wrapped in the pieces of clothes and sealed — with the numbers of the First Information Reports (FIRs) and names of the police station concerned clearly written on them — were also thrown in the trash despite they were not damaged in the fire.

Similarly, several small bottles containing liquid chemical acid samples, which could prove as crucial evidence in various cases, were also thrown in the wreckage.

The burnt daggers of different sizes also lied abandoned, as huge number of cosmetic items lied scattered. In one corner were kept the bottles of ‘expired’ liquor of foreign brands.

Damage not ascertained

While the police investigators believed the number of the lost case properties could run in thousands, the prosecution department appeared to be in the dark about the actual scale of damage the inferno had caused.

When contacted by Dawn, Prosecutor General Sindh Ayaz Tunio said he had sent a letter to the Additional Inspector-General of Karachi last month asking him to share the actual number of case properties destroyed in the fire.

However, he said his department had yet to receive any information.

However, the official statistics obtained by Dawn suggested that 10,111 criminal cases — 4,766 in the South district and 5,345 in the West – were currently pending trial in the courts of both districts. The prosecution and judicial sources believed that most of them had case properties.

More importantly, the case properties of 3,040 cases pending trial before the 31 anti-terrorism courts in the metropolis were also housed in the same portion.

The senior lawyers voiced concerns over the manner in which the investigators were handling such a large number of the case properties and other evidence in such a careless manner, particularly ahead of the monsoon season around the corner.

“The case property means anything, be it documents or any object, that is relevant to the offence of civil or criminal nature, is a crucial piece of evidence on the basis of which the prosecution has to prove its case,” Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed, told Dawn.

“The civil litigations are mostly based on the documentary evidence,” the former president of the Karachi Bar Association explained, adding that the “criminal litigations most relied on the circumstantial and forensic evidence.”

Mr Tunio put the responsibility of preserving the evidence on the police.

“If there is no evidence, how the prosecution can prove its cases,” he asked agreeing that losing the evidence in such huge quantity would mean leaving hundreds of the trials inconclusive that could benefit the criminals.

Citing one such example, the top prosecutor said recently one antiterrorism court had sent a notice to the PG Office confirming the purported loss of the case property involved in one pending case.

If immediate steps were not taken, he said more such notices would be pouring in his office in the coming days.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2018