PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has rejected the bail plea of 29 people charged with lynching a murder suspect after vandalising a police station in Bajaur district two months ago.

The bench, however, granted bail to 11 suspects observing that their names did not appear in the FIR and instead, they were named in the case belatedly, so a further inquiry was needed into the charges against them under Section 497(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

It directed every suspect to produce two surety bonds each of Rs100,000.

Two petitions were jointly filed by 40 of the arrested suspects.

One petition was filed by Yar Khan and 27 others but it was rejected, while the second petition was filed by 12 suspects but the court granted bail to 11 of them.

Orders release of 11 for not being named in FIR

The FIR of the lynching incident was registered by the Nawagai police station on the complaint of SHO Inspector Fazalur Rehman on May 19, 2022, under sections 302, 324, 353, 427, 436, 148, 149 of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.

The complainant claimed that he was busy interrogating suspect Abdur Rashid in connection with a missing person, Ghafoor Rehman.

He said as the probe was under way, the missing person was found dead and his body was shifted to the district headquarters hospital in Khar.

The complainant alleged that the father of deceased Ziarat Khan invited the residents to the police station attack.

He claimed that relatives of the deceased along with around 900 residents surrounded the police station and demanded the custody of the suspect for punishment.

The complainant claimed that the violent mob later attacked the police station while throwing stones and firing bullets at the building.

He added that the crowd smashed the main gate, entered the premises, damaged property and torched different parts of the building.

The complainant alleged that the arsonists dragged the suspect out of the lock-up and killed him by hitting him with sticks and stones before throwing the body on the road.

The bench observed that records showed that the petitioners, including Yar Khan, Zar Bacha and 27 others, were directly named in the FIR for making an attack on the Nawagai police station in the form of a mob armed with weapons and sticks.

The bench observed that that the mode and manner of the occurrence emerging from the evidence on record suggested that the petitioners were directly charged while forming an unlawful assembly, had challenged the writ of the government by taking the law into their own hands by dragging the suspect on the road and committing his murder in a brutal manner.

About four of the petitioners, who contended that they were juveniles, the court observed that it was a settled law that the juvenile accused deserved a lenient view but not in each and every case nor could the tender age be used as a licence by a juvenile to kill or attempt to kill innocent people.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2022