PESHAWAR: An anti-terrorism court on Thursday convicted a tehsil councillor and a former employee of the Abdul Wali Khan University in the 2017 lynching of a student, Mashal Khan, on baseless charges of blasphemy, and sentenced them on multiple counts to life imprisonment with a fine of Rs300,000 each.

Judge Mehmood-ul-Hassan Khattak pronounced that the prosecution had proved without a shadow of a doubt charges against Arif, a tehsil councillor of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, and Asad Zia aka Asad Katlang, an office assistant at the university.

The court, however, acquitted two accused, Izharullah aka Joni and Sabirullah aka Sabir Mayar, both students, as the prosecution could not bring any cogent and convincing evidence against them nor were they seen in any of the video clips produced by the prosecution.

The court had reserved its judgement on March 12 after completion of arguments by all parties and pronounced it on Thursday while releasing a 35-page judgement.

Two accused students acquitted due to lack of evidence

Arif, Asad, Izharullah and Sabirullah had been absconding after the lynching incident and were finally arrested last year.

Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old student of the Department of Mass Communication at the Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, was lynched by a mob over blasphemy allegations on April 13, 2017.

The anti-terrorism court (ATC) had on Feb 7, 2018, convicted 31 of the 57 accused persons who had initially faced trial in the lynching case, awarding death sentence to prime accused Imran Khan, life imprisonment to five of the convicts and three-year imprisonment to 25 others.

The ATC, which had conducted trial inside Haripur Central Prison, had, however, acquitted 26 of the accused, observing that the prosecution had failed to prove charges against them.

In its detailed judgement, the court referred to several of the video clips of the occurrence observing that Arif and Asad were seen severely torturing and kicking Mashal.

Moreover, the judge ruled, in one of the video clips Arif was congratulating other co-accused for committing the murder of Mashal, and taking oath from others present there not to disclose names of any of the accused and he himself took the liability of the murder and disclosed his name, parentage and address.

It was ruled that in another clip Asad was seen provoking the mob against Mashal and asking them to search him out.

The judge ruled that from all the discussed oral statements of prosecution witnesses supported by video clips, photographs and recoveries made from the crime scene, it was clear that Arif had instigated the mob of students and others by delivering provocative speeches against Mashal and had taken active part in his murder by hatching a criminal conspiracy and in pursuance thereof, an unlawful assembly was made for using criminal force and violence which result into the barbaric murder of the student.

Almost same observation was made by the court about Asad.

Both convicts have been sentenced to life imprisonment and fined Rs100,000 under Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC); sentenced to life imprisonment and fined Rs100,000 under Section 302 of the PPC (intentional murder); sentenced to life term and fined Rs100,000 under Section 7(1) Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA); and sentenced to life imprisonment under Section 21(I) of the ATA for aiding and abetting each other and the aggravated mob in killing Mashal.

A total of 46 prosecution witnesses had appeared in the court to record evidence.

Several of the appeals of the convicts as well as those of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and Mohammad Iqbal against acquittal of the earlier accused persons and awarding nominal sentence to several of the accused have been pending before the Peshawar High Court.

In his testimony, one of the witnesses, Ali Nawaz, assistant warden of the Hostel No 1 of the university, had stated that the mob entered the hostel after breaking the main gate and went upstairs. Then they heard sound of three shots after which the mob dispersed and they got an opportunity to go upstairs.

He stated that they saw Mashal lying in injured condition on the stairs of the second floor. Ali said that when two other university employees picked Mashal up, he was reciting Kalima and saying that he was innocent and should be shifted to the hospital.

Ali said that they took him to the ground floor but in the meantime another mob came there and started beating up Mashal.

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2019