KARACHI: An antiterrorism court has ruled that the offence of kidnapping for ransom does not come within the definition of ‘terrorism’.

The judge of the ATC-XVI made this observation while announcing the verdict in a case pertaining to kidnapping of ransom of a Class-XI student and his murder.

The court handed down death sentence to two accused — Ammar Asad and Arsalan alias Munno — for kidnapping Sohaib Adil and later killing him despite receiving Rs500,000 ransom by his family within the jurisdiction of the Ferozabad police station on May 7, 2009.

The ATC had conducted the trial for the third time in compliance with the directives of the Sindh High Court that sent the case for retrial on the appeals filed by the accuse.

On Feb 16, 2015, the ATC-V judge had sentenced both the accused to life in prison in the case, while acquitting co-accused Sikandar for lack of evidence.

However, both the convicts challenged their conviction before the SHC, which remanded back the case for re-trial. The bench had observed that the offence of kidnapping for ransom was proved, but no sentence was passed in respect of this conviction.

Likewise, the high court also observed that although the appellants were convicted and sentenced under Section 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), but “no separate conviction and sentence had been recorded in respect of Section 7 of ATA, 1997”.

After conducting the re-trial, the ATC judge sentenced Asad to 14-year-imprisonment and sentenced Arsalan to death for committing the murder of the teenage victim.

The appellants once again challenged their sentences in the SHC, which directed the ATC to conduct the re-trial from the stage of recording statements of the convicts under Section 342 of the criminal procedure code.

The ATC judge handed death sentence to both the accused in the retrial.

Announcing the judgement recently, the ATC judge noted that the definition of terrorism, with all reverence, had remained hot topic with variant and divergent observation of superior courts leading to the formation of larger bench for once and for all to decide and determine the definition of terrorism in term of cases being tried for Anti-Terrorism Courts.

He noted that the Supreme Court in acase had traced down the history of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 with particular reference to the definition of terrorism with all its amendment, particularly in Section-6 of ATC, 1997 i.e. 2nd Amendment Ordinance 1999 and Anti-Terrorism (Amendment Ordinance 2001) in which fresh and new definition of terrorism was introduced in Section-6 of ATA.

“The SC had held determinative factor would be the motive and design of terrorism not the effect of offence i.e. panic, harassment, insecurity in the society,” noted the judge.

Therefore, the judge concluded that the provisions of ATA, 1997 were not attracted in the case to the extent of conviction under Section 7(e) of ATA, 1997 for the offence of ‘terrorism’.

Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2022