KARACHI: An antiterrorism court on Thursday handed down death sentence to an accused five years after he killed two visiting Moroccan preachers and a local man in a sectarian attack in the city.

Sohail Ahmed Siddiqui was found guilty of killing visiting foreign scholars Sheikh Umar Khattab and Sheikh Abdul Majeed outside a mosque in North Nazimabad’s Block-I on the night of Dec 3, 2013.

On Thursday, the judge of ATC-VI, who conducted trial in the judicial complex inside the central prison, pronounced his verdict reserved after recording evidence and final arguments from both sides.

The judge ruled that the prosecution had succeeded in proving its case against the detained accused, thus convicting him on five counts.

Two absconders in the case yet to be arrested

The judge awarded capital punishment to the accused, Sohail Ahmed Siddiqui, for committing the three murders and terrorism.

He was ordered to pay Rs200,000 compensation to the legal heirs of the victims.

The convict was handed down a collective sentence of 10-year imprisonment and Rs50,000 fine for attempted murder and an armed attack on a place of worship. On default, he would serve another six-month imprisonment.

Furthermore, the court sentenced him to seven-year rigorous imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs10,000 for possessing an unlicensed weapon. However, all the sentences would run concurrently.

The case against two alleged absconding suspects — Asif and Saad, alias Ahmed — was kept on dormant file to be reopened on their arrest or surrender before court.

According to the prosecution, complainant Qari Mohammad Hanif said he with the visiting Moroccan religious scholars and others offered Maghrib prayers at Madni Masjid in North Nazimabad’s Block-I on Dec 3, 2013. Some unknown armed assailants opened fire on them while they were returning to the mosque, it added.

Moroccan Khitab-ul-Awaid Abdul Majeed-ur-Ritwi and Sheikh Umar Khattab and Sulaiman (a Pakistani) died on the spot, while the complainant and another man, Shahrukh, sustained bullet wounds, the prosecution stated. Later, it said, the assailants fled on motorcycles.

The investigating officer mentioned in the investigation report that during initial interrogation Sohail Siddiqui confessed to having committed the crime with his accomplices Asif and Saad, alias Ahmed.

It further said that the accused also disclosed that they had stashed an unlicensed 9mm calibre pistol with three rounds in the area of Rao Nursery near the Shipowners College roundabout and led the police to its recovery. Therefore, he was booked and arrested in a separate case of possessing an illicit weapon.

After completion of the investigation, the IO submitted a final investigation report, which was accepted by the court. Later, the court indicted the accused, who pleaded not guilty and opted to contest the case.

During the trial, the prosecution examined 12 witnesses, including the injured, who witnessed the incident, medico-legal officers and officials, to establish its case.

Innocence claim

In his statement under Section 342 of the Criminal Procedure Code, Sohail Siddiqui denied the allegations made by the prosecution against him and claimed innocence.

He deposed that all the prosecution witnesses were police officials, thus they were interested and inimical to him.

The accused testified that the Rangers had picked him up from his wife’s property, a godown located in Nazimabad No. 1 area, where he had gone to collect the monthly rent, on Dec 22, 2014, on the complaint of a unit in-charge of the Sunni Tehreek, Asif Qadri.

The accused further testified that Asif Qadri used to extort money from him every month and also wanted to illegally dispossess him from the property of his wife.

Defence counsel Mohammad Nazeer Yousufani contended that the Rangers obtained three-month remand of Sohail Siddiqui on Jan 9, 2015 and after 105 days he came to know that he had been implicated in the present case. After two years of lodging the murder case, Siddiqui was again arrested and booked in a false case of illicit weapon.

The defence counsel contended that during the remand period his client was never taken out of the room nor he went to the place of alleged recovery. Arguing that Siddiqui had not committed any crime, the defence counsel pleaded that he be acquitted of the charges levelled against him by the police.

However, the judge noted that neither the accused deposed on oath nor did he lead to the production of any defence witness.

On the other hand, state prosecutor Farhana Parveen and special public prosecutor for the Rangers Rana Khalid argued that the evidence of the witnesses and the recovery fully corroborated each other, establishing the charges levelled against the accused by the prosecution.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2019