KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday reserved its order on an appeal filed by a convict against his conviction handed down to him by an antiterrorism court.

The ATC had sentenced Nasruddin to 10-year imprisonment in March 2019 after finding him guilty of providing a rented house to militants in Urdu Bazaar. Three of them had killed themselves in a suicide blast along with a female associate and an infant following a seven-hour-long stand-off with law enforcement agencies in April 2017.

The prosecution said that four Rangers personnel and two passers-by sustained wounds when the terrorists threw grenades and four militants of a banned outfit escaped during the shootout.

The convict through his lawyer challenged the conviction of the trial court before the SHC and pleaded to set aside the judgement.

The two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro reserved the judgement on the appeal after recording arguments from the counsel for appellant and the special public prosecutor of Rangers.

The lawyer for the appellant contended that his client had no direct or indirect links with the present case and nothing was recovered from his possession to connect him to the case. The counsel also requested for reduction in the sentence.

The Rangers prosecutor, Sajid Mehboob Shaikh, argued that the order of the trial court was in accordance with law and the appellant was a facilitator of militants and had been convicted under Section 11-N of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

He further contended that the rent agreement was in the name of the appellant and he also admitted in his 164 CrPC statement that one of the militants was his cousin and he pleaded to uphold the conviction.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2020