A district and sessions court on Friday hearing the Shahzeb Khan murder case sought the details of a pardon offered to the accused by the victim's family.

During today's hearing of the case, the four accused of the murder of Shahzeb ─ Shahrukh Jatoi, Siraj Talpur, Sajjad Talpur and Ghulam Mustafa Lashari ─ appeared before the court.

In addition to the details of the pardon that was offered by Shahzeb's family to the accused, Judge Imdaad Hussain Khoso also sought the details of arguments presented by the prosecution and the defence in the Sindh High Court before the case was transferred to the district and sessions court.

The case was adjourned until January 20.

In December, Jatoi and two co-accused were released from jail after a district and sessions court approved their bail applications.

Shahzeb Khan's father, Aurangzeb Khan, had asked the sessions court to not only release the four men earlier convicted of his son's murder on bail, but also drop the case against them completely.

An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) had earlier awarded the death penalty to Shahrukh Jatoi and Siraj Ali Talpur for 20-year-old Shahzeb's murder in 2012 following a petty dispute. Siraj's younger brother, Sajjad Ali Talpur, and domestic helper Ghulam Murtaza Lashari had been handed life sentences.

A couple of months after the sentence was passed, however, Shahzeb's parents had issued a formal pardon for the convicts, approved by the Sindh High Court.

Despite the pardon, however, the death penalty had been upheld because of the addition of terrorism charges to the case.

However, the SHC recently set aside the death penalty and ordered a retrial of the case in a sessions court after a criminal review petition filed by Jatoi's lawyer argued that terrorism charges should be dropped as the prime suspect was a juvenile at the time of the offence.