ISLAMABAD: Visibly unhappy with the quality of the investigation into the assassination of celebrated philanthropist and former Sindh governor Hakim Mohammad Said, the Supreme Court observed that it was regrettable that the inves-tigating team had resorted to fabri-cation before bringing the case to trial.

Dismissing the Sindh government’s appeal against a Sindh High Court verdict acquitting the accused Mohammad Amirullah, Abu Imran Pasha and Mohammad Shakir — who were said to have links with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement — the apex court ruled that the prosecution had indeed failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The bench, headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, had taken up the state’s appeal against the SHC’s May 31, 2001 judgment.

In his six-page verdict, Justice Khosa ruled that since the apex court’s own evaluation of the evidence also failed to reach a conclusion different from that reached by the high court, “these appeals are therefore dismissed”.

Punching holes into the investigation, the verdict holds that during the course of the probe, the accused were implicated at different points in time. In contrast, the four prosecution witnesses provided an eyewitness account of the incident itself before the trial court, but the evidence offered by one of the witnesses differed from that narrated by other eyewitnesses.

The verdict also notes that some of the accused were identified by witnesses during the trial, but the circumstances showed that the witnesses had many opportunities to see these accused before and during the trial, before they identified them. Thus, their evidence could not be considered significant, the judgment held.

The prosecution had also produced a suspect, Moula Bukhsh, before the trial court after 25 days of the incident, even though his statement was contradicted by the investigating officer himself.

Medical and forensic evidence gleaned from the scene also proved inconclusive.

Similarly, one of the suspect’s confessions did not carry a magistrate’s certificate, which was a mandatory requirement.

The rest of the statements were also suspect and probably not obtained freely or voluntarily, the verdict noted.

The judgment also held that from an examination of the confession statements, it was obvious that accused had been forced to sign a blank document and their statement was added later on. For this and other reasons, the court concluded that the ‘confessions’ did not have evidentiary value.

The apex court also noted that certain key legal requirements under sections 337 and 338 of the Criminal Procedure Code had not been fulfilled in this case, rendering the statements of certain ‘approvers’ inadmissible.

The judgment called into question the ballistic evidence recovered from the crime scene and questioned the timeline whereby bullet casings and the weapons allegedly recovered from the accused, were sent to Forensic Science Laboratory.

On the recovery of a fingerprint of one of the accused from one of the mirrors of the vehicle used by Hakim Said’s attackers, the verdict noted that the mirror in question was never sealed or secured independently, holding that it would be easy to fabricate such evidence after the fact.