ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk will take up on Tuesday an appeal against a decision of the Supreme Court office to return the second review petition by target killer Saulat Mirza who is to be hanged on March 19 at Mach Jail in Balochistan.

The court office returned the petition, filed by Advocate Sardar Latif Khosa on Jan 6 on behalf of Saulat Mirza, on the grounds that a three-judge SC bench headed by Justice Syed Deedar Hussain Shah had already dismissed the earlier review petition on March 9.

Also read: SHC seeks comments from top police officers on Saulat Mirza’s ‘missing’ brother

His mercy petition has been rejected by the president.

The chamber appeal was to be taken up on Monday, but since Sardar Khosa could not turn up, the matter was adjourned for Tuesday.

Saulat Mirza, a worker of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court on May 24, 1999, for killing the then managing director of Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, Shahid Hamid, and his driver and a guard on July 5, 1997, in Karachi. He was arrested on Dec 10, 1998, from the Karachi Airport on his return from Bangkok.

In the second petition, Mirza requested the apex court to revisit its Sept 14, 2001, judgment of turning down his criminal appeal against the Sindh High Court’s Jan 21, 2000, verdict which maintained the death sentence handed down by the ATC.

In its judgment, the Supreme Court had held that the wife and son of the deceased, being independent and uninterested witnesses, had testified that they had seen Mirza firing at Shahid Hamid.

Mirza requested the apex court to consider summoning the record of a 1997 human right case consisting of statements of Shahid Hamid’s widow Shahnaz and son Umair and the proceedings relating to the murder in question for having direct bearing in the matter.

The petitioner argued that Mrs Shahnaz Hamid, who was an eyewitness, had picked him during a test identification parade 540 days after the occurrence (ten days after his arrest) and accused in the court as the perpetrator of the crime. But in her statement recorded in the 1997 human right case, she unambiguously stated that she had reached the crime scene after the occurrence and not seen the culprits. So was the position of Umair Shahid, the petitioner contended.

He said he had been arrested in Dec 1998 and sentenced to death on May 24, 1999, after which he had spent all his life in the death cell and undergone life imprisonment with remissions in the prison.

Published in Dawn March 17th , 2015

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