KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court on Friday reserved its verdict till Aug 12 in the Shershah scrap market carnage case.

Lal Mohammad Magsi, Shafi Mohammad and Aslam Pervez, said to be associated with one of the several criminal gangs operating in Lyari, have been charged with carrying out the carnage on Oct 19, 2010 that had left 12 people dead and several others wounded over non-payment of protection money.

After hearing the concluding arguments from both sides, Judge Bashir Ahmed Khoso of the ATC-I reserved his judgement.

In his final arguments, defence counsel M.R. Syed contended that there was no direct as well as circumstantial evidence since none of the prosecution witnesses deposed against the accused persons.

He maintained that the identification parade of the accused through two witnesses had no legal value as the prosecution did not examine them before the trial court.

He argued that the administrative judge of the ATCs had released nine other suspects in 2011 since the complainant did not identify them, adding that the case of his clients was also on the same footing and pleaded for their acquittal.

The special public prosecutor, Shahid Mehmood, argued that the accused were nominated in the FIR and two eyewitnesses had rightly picked out them during an identification parade before a judicial magistrate.

However, he contended that since it was a high-profile case and the accused were hardened criminals, the eyewitnesses did not turn up before the trial court and went into hiding due to fear and insecurity as protection was not provided to them regardless of repeated court orders.

The prosecutor said that the judicial magistrate in his evidence informed the trial court about the identification of the accused by the witnesses. Therefore, their evidence was admissible as provided in Section 46 and 47 of the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order 1984 and Section 265-J of the criminal procedure code and sought capital punishment.

A case was registered under Sections 302 (premeditated murder), 324 (attempted murder), 386 (extortion by putting a person in fear of death or grievous hurt) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 at the Pak Colony police station on a complaint of a survivor, Mohammad Nafees.

Noor Mohammad alias Baba Ladla, Hameed alias Mulla Raju, Rasheed and Imdad were the absconding accused in the case.

On Jan 26, 2011 the administrative judge of the ATCs had released nine other suspects in the present case under Section 497 (2) of the CrPC since the complainant, who nominated the suspects in the FIR with parentage, failed to recognise any of the them in court and other eyewitness were also not ready to identify them.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2014