A sessions court in Karachi sentenced film director Mansoor Mujahid and his friend Anab Hameed to life imprisonment for the murder of their friend Faisal Nabi.

The court also ordered both convicts to pay Rs200,000 each to Nabi's heirs as compensation. The court kept the case as dormant against a third accused Masooma Zainab Abidi — who is absconding and was charged for abetting — until her arrest or surrender. The verdict was announced on Tuesday evening.

Nabi was shot dead in an apartment in Karachi's Defence Housing Authority in 2013. The prosecution said that Mujahid and his friends were consuming party drugs at Hameed's apartment when a heated argument broke out between the victim and the director, who shot Nabi.

The prosecution said that Mujahid, with common intention and consultation with Hameed and Abidi, had used an unlicensed weapon to shoot Nabi. The court was further told that after shooting the victim, both convicts and Abidi dumped Nabi's body — after stabbing and burning it in order to hide the identify of the deceased — in the parking lot of the apartment building.

Mujahid and Hameed were indicted for Nabi's murder in 2014. The prosecution informed the court that during the investigation by an inquiry officer, Mujahid had confessed to shooting Nabi twice, while Hameed admitted that she had stabbed the victim and led the police to a place where the body, pistol, daggers, blood-stained pillow and bedcovers were found.

The prosecution said that during the investigation, Hameed had said that Nabi had assaulted her a few days before the murder and that she had written about the incident in her diary that was read by Mujahid.

A case had been registered under Sections 302 (premeditated murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim’s brother-in-law at the Clifton police station.