KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has upheld the life imprisonment handed down to two convicts by a trial court in a kidnapping for ransom case of a child.

An antiterrorism court had sentenced Toor Khan and Amir Farooq to life in prison in February 2015 for abducting eight-year-old Osama in Bahadurabad in 2009 and released the captive after taking Rs1 million ransom from his father Mohammad Sohail.

The trial court had acquitted the third accused from want of evidence.

The accused through their counsel challenged the trial court order before the SHC and after hearing arguments from both sides and examining the record and proceedings of the case, the two-judge SHC bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha dismissed the appeals and maintained the conviction of the ATC. The bench observed that the prosecution had successfully established its case against both appellants, adding that the captive had identified the appellants and deposed against them before the court and his testimony was corroborated by other ocular evidence.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2020