With the completion of trial by an anti-terrorism court of four of the accused persons in the lynching case of Mashal Khan, a student of Abdul Wali Khan University (AWKU), Mardan, the focus now will be on the relevant appeals, pending before the Peshawar High Court.

Apart from accounts of some of the eyewitnesses, several of the video clips of the murder produce d by the prosecution had played a key role in conviction of the accused persons.

The four accused, including PTI’s tehsil councillor Arif Khan, an official of the university Asad Zia alias Asad Katlang attached with ANP, and two students Sabirullah alias Sabir Mayar and Izharullah alias Joni, had been absconding after the occurrence in 2017 and were subsequently taken into custody when the initial trial of 57 of the accused persons was conducted by an another ATC last year.

ATC judge Mehmoodul Hassan on March 21 convicted two of the accused, Arif and Asad, and sentenced them to life imprisonment on four counts and a fine of Rs300,000 each. Rest of the two accused, Izharullah and Sabir, have been acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence.

With the conclusion of this trial, so far 61 accused have been tried on multiple charges. A total of 33 of them have been convicted of which one accused named Imran Khan, who was also a student, had been sentenced to death, seven to life imprisonment and 25 others to three years rigorous imprisonment. The remaining 28 accused persons have been acquitted.

Earlier, an ATC had on Feb 7, 2018, convicted 31 of the 57 accused who had initially faced trial in the lynching case, awarding death sentence to Imran Khan, life imprisonment to five of them and three-year imprisonment to 25 others.

The ATC, which had conducted trial inside Haripur central prison, had however acquitted 26 of the accused persons observing that the prosecution failed to prove the charges against them. The earlier trial court had issued perpetual arrest warrants for the present four accused persons, who had been absconding after the occurrence.

Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old student of the Department of Journalism at AWKU, Mardan, was killed by a mob over the allegation of blasphemy on April 13, 2017.

In both the trials only four of the accused persons named Mudassir Bashir, Bilal Baksh, Arif and Asad were found guilty of hatching criminal conspiracy which is punishable under section 12-B of Pakistan Penal Code. Of them, only Mudassir Bashir was a student and was class representative in the journalism department, whereas Bilal Baksh and Asad were employees of the university and Arif was a councillor.

Among the 33 convicts, 14 were employees of AWKU and all of them had actively participated in lynching of the deceased. The earlier trial court, which had convicted 13 of the employees, had observed that that all the 13 accused were posted in other departments and at the same time they were not residing in any of the hostels of the university.

During both the trials, the charges of committing blasphemy by Mashal Khan were declared unfounded and un-established, but were made the basis for his murder. One of the most important pieces of evidence was the report of Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA), which after examining the relevant video footages had verified/identified different accused persons therein. In the previous judgment, the ATC had mentioned that 30 of the accused were identified in its report by the PFSA authorities.

The court had ruled that video clips produced during prosecution evidence were substantive piece of evidence and in view of Article 164 Qanoon-i-Shahadat were admissible in evidence that no cutting, editing and pasting was reported by the FPSA authorities and the videos were reported to be genuine.

In the present trial also, the court referred to several of the video clips of the occurrence observing that the accused councillor Arif and Asad Katlang were seen torturing and kicking Mashal Khan.

A teacher at the Department of Journalism, Ziaullah Hamdard, turned out to be a key prosecution witness who recorded his testimony in both the trials. He had stated that on the day of occurrence he reached the department after receiving a phone call that one of the teachers Madam Sana was alone in the office and some students had gathered there threatening to kill Mashal Khan and another student Abdullah.

In his testimony, he elaborated how some of the students levelled different allegations against Mashal Khan and how he pacified them. He explained the circumstances and the characters due to whom the issue had aggravated.

During the trial, the prosecution was represented by a senior prosecutor Arif Bilal, whereas the provincial government had also hired services of Barrister Amirullah Khan Chamkani, who represented Mohammad Iqbal Khan, Mashal’s father.

Advocate Shabir Hussain Gigyani had appeared for the two acquitted accused persons and had contended that his clients were not present in any of the video clips and there was also no ocular account of any witness to connect them with commission of the offence.

Following completion of trial, now the focus will be on the Peshawar High Court where several of the appeals of the earlier convicts as well as that of KP government and Mohammad Iqbal against acquittal of the accused persons and awarding nominal sentence to several of the accused in the earlier trial have been pending.

In April last year, the high court had ordered to club all appeals that originated out of the ATC’s judgment and conduct the hearing at the principal seat of the court in Peshawar, as some of the appeals were filed before the Abbottabad circuit bench of the high court.

It is expected that the two recent convicts will also file appeals before the high court, whereas the state will challenge the acquittal of Izharullah and Sabir. Presently, of the total 33 convicts only eight are behind bars whereas the remaining 25, who were awarded nominal sentences, were released on bail on Feb 27, 2018.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2019

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