KARACHI: Another criminal revision application was filed in the Sindh High Court against the May 23 order of an antiterrorism court through which it transferred the Nazim Jokhio murder case to a regular court for trial.

Advocate Mazhar Ali Junejo, who was a close friend of the victim and also a prosecution witness in the murder case, approached the SHC stating that the murder of the young man was an offence of terrorism.

He also questioned the power of the investigating officer to remove the names of two Pakistan Peoples Party lawmakers from the list of accused persons without any lawful authority.

A two-judge SHC bench is set to take up the case on Thursday (today).

The applicant submitted that he was a close friend of Jokhio and a key prosecution witness as the victim had sent him a voice message just before being kidnapped and taken to the Jam House.

While referring to the observation of ATC in the impugned judgement that incident took place in furtherance of a private dispute and vendetta, he stated that the court had totally ignored the real facts of the investigation report and material attached with it.

The applicant further stated that the victim was kidnapped from his house around midnight as he filmed the foreign guests of the lawmakers and uploaded the video on social media. He was taken to the Jam House where he was forced to delete the video and later brutally murdered, he said.

He argued that place of incident, Jam House in Malir, was a public place as main accused persons being feudal lords of the Jokhio community and lawmakers used it for their office where general public came to resolve their issues.

He submitted that MNA Jam Karim and his brother MPA Jam Awais were influential persons of the locality and it was designed to teach a brutal and heinous lesson to the Jokhio tribe and other communities not to raise voice against them and their guests in their constituent area and the killing had created fear and terror in the minds of people particularly the Jokhio tribe.

The applicant said that in the final charge sheet filed before a magistrate, the IO had also named the two lawmakers as accused, but after reinvestigating the case he did not charge sheet them since legal heirs entered into a compromise with the main accused which was yet to be declared valid by a court.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2022