KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has set aside life imprisonment handed down to a man by the trial court in a case pertaining to the killing of two policemen.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha allowed the appeal of Syed Aijaz Shah Qadri by extending him the benefit of doubt.

An antiterrorism court had sentenced Qadri to life in prison in October 2018 after holding him guilty for killing Assistant Sub-Inspector Mohammad Arif and Head Constable Nadeem Akhtar during an attack on a police van of then SP Mohammad Aslam Khan near Gizri in January 2006. The trial court had their acquitted co-accused Ajmal Pahari due to lack of evidence.

The convict filed an appeal against the ATC’s order and after hearing both sides and examining record and proceedings of the case the bench allowed the appeal.

The bench in its judgement observed that the appellant was not nominated in the FIR lodged on the complaint of SP Khan, who was later killed along with two police guards in a suicide attack on his motorcade on the Lyari Expressway in January 2014.

It questioned two witnesses and noted that why these so-called eyewitnesses popped up a number of years after the incident to turn up at an identification parade before a magistrate to identify the appellant. The bench found the eyewitness to be a chance witnesses.

The SP could not record his evidence before the trial court as he was killed and the prosecution also relied on the statement of police van driver Amir Malik, who sustained injuries in the attack and testified against the appellant and identified him as one of the assailants, it said.

“However, we find that we cannot rely on him as having correctly and safely identifying the appellant as one of those persons who fired upon the police party and caused the death of deceased”, it added.

The order further said that the policeman did not mention the description of the appellant in his police statement and he was not called in the identification parade before the magistrate and deposed against the appellant and recognised him as one of the shooters before the trial court 13 years after the incident.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2022