KARACHI: While heading a three-judge bench at the Supreme Court’s Karachi registry on Monday, Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khan Khosa disposed of six criminal appeals against convictions and acquittals.

The bench heard four appeals against life imprisonment handed down by trial courts and maintained by the Sindh High Court and two appeals of the state against acquittal.

The bench allowed the appeals of Mohammad Yusuf Bugti, Hakim Ali Khoso and Shaukat Ali Brohi against their conviction in a kidnapping for ransom case and observed that the prosecution failed to produce sufficient evidence, adding that the identification parade of the accused persons, conducted by a judicial magistrate, was not in accordance with the law.

The SC directed the jail authorities to release them if they were not wanted in any other case.

An antiterrorism court had sentenced the appellants to life in prison in May 2014 after finding them guilty of kidnapping a trader, Tayyab, in Gadap Town in 2009 and demanding ransom for his release.

The SHC had upheld the trial court’s order. Therefore, the convicts filed appeals before the apex court.

The bench also directed prison authorities to release Mansoor Khan if not involved in any other cases after treating the period he has already undergone as imprisonment.

The trial court had awarded life term to the accused for killing a “friend” of his at a farmhouse in the Sharafi Goth area in 2008. The SHC had upheld the conviction.

Moreover, the bench, also comprising Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel and Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, allowed an appeal of Riaz Chandio against life imprisonment handed down by a trial court in Dadu. The appellant was accused of killing Abdul Haleem Junejo in 2007.

The three-judge bench will continue to hear identical criminal appeals on Tuesday.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2019