KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday set aside the life imprisonment handed down to two men by an antiterrorism court in a kidnapping for ransom case.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha observed that there was no ocular evidence regarding the identification of the appellants as the identification parade was doubtful while there were also many missing links in the chain of circumstantial evidence.

An ATC had sentenced Mohammad Jumman Brohi and Ghulam Yaseen to life in prison in January 2014 for abducting Ehsanullah and Abdul Rehman in a Manghopir locality in April 2012 and demanding a ransom against their release.

The convicts, through their counsel, challenged the trial court order before the SHC and after hearing from both sides and examining the record and proceedings of the case, the bench allowed the appeal and set aside the verdict of the trial court.

The bench in its judgement said that the case of prosecution was mainly based on the identification parade of the appellants conducted by a judicial magistrate in which one of the captives, Ehsanullah, identified them as kidnappers.

However, the bench could not safely rely on such a parade as the captive did not give any appearance of the appellants in any statement before the identification parade and he also did not turn up before the trial court to record his statement.

“There are doubts that the identification parade itself was conducted in accordance with law since the names and addresses and CNICs of the dummies were not taken,” it said and added that the other captive, Abdul Rehman, in his evidence before the trial court said that he was blindfolded and did not identify the appellants and he also gave no evidence regarding the correctness of the identification parade.

The evidence of other eyewitnesses, who were present at the time of kidnapping, was also not consistent as the bench said that it could not safely rely on eyewitnesses regarding the identification of the appellants who as per them were part of a gang that kidnapped the captives.

The judgement further said that nothing was recovered from the appellants at the time of their arrest and they did not lead the police to any recovery while there was no supporting evidence to corroborate the statement of the complainant about demand or payment of ransom since no call data record (CDR) was produced and there was also no evidence that who paid the ransom, where it was paid and if any ransom money was withdrawn from the bank.

According to the prosecution, around 15 armed men broke into the guesthouse of complainant Atiqullah Shah, deprived him and others of valuables and took away his son Ehsanullah and brother-in-law Abdul Rehman.

The kidnappers demanded a ransom of Rs6 million from the complainant for the release of both the victims and Rs2.5m was paid on the same night and captives were released, it added.

Later, police arrested them in another case and during questioning they disclosed their involvement along with that of absconding accomplices in the present case, it concluded.

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2020