KHAIRPUR: The Khairpur Anti-Terrorism Court on Tuesday sentenced four murder accused to death and imposed a fine of Rs500,000 on each of them for killing two employees of the Khairpur Sugar Mills and a police constable in a robbery of Rs2.5 million on Dec 31, 2013.

According to the prosecution, the employees, Ghulam Qambar Chandio and Singhar Ali Wassan, along with police constable Shahzado Lanjwani, were travelling in a car with the money drawn from a bank branch for the mills. It said when the car reached near Sohu Kanasira village in the jurisdiction of the Kot Diji police station on its way to the mills, the four accused stopped it at gunpoint and tried to loot them. The victims offered resistance upon which the accused shot dead all of them and took away the money.

Elahi Bux Lanjwani, the brother of constable Lanjwani, had lodged the FIR of the incident at the Kot Diji police station nominating Abdul Ghaffar Rind, Imtiaz Ali Magsi, Abid Ali Shaikh, Singhar Ali Jatoi and an unknown person as the killers. Later, the four nominated accused were arrested from a place in Umerkot district.

The ATC on Tuesday found the accused guilty of the triple murder and awarded them death penalty on six counts and also ordered them to pay a fine of Rs500,000 each. The convicts were sent back to the Khairpur central jail after the verdict was pronounced.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2019