KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday set aside life imprisonment handed down to a man by the trial court in a kidnapping for ransom case.

A two-judge bench comprising by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha and Justice Zulfiqar Ali Sangi while extending the benefit of the doubt to the appellant observed that the evidence of prosecution was found completely unreliable and utterly deficient to establish the charges.

An antiterrorism court had sentenced Mohammad Ameer to life in prison in April last year for abducting Mohammad Shoaib in Landhi in June 2020 and demanding ransom for his safe release.

The convict, through his counsel, impugned the trial court’s order before the SHC and after hearing both sides and examining the record and proceedings of the case, the bench allowed the appeal and acquitted the appellant.

The bench in its judgement observed that normally captives were star witnesses in kidnapping cases, but in the instant case the victim had not identified the accused at the time of recording his evidence and also changed his stance from his earlier statement recorded by police under Section 161 of the criminal procedure code and made dishonest improvements, which rendered his evidence unreliable.

During cross-examination before the trial court, the captive had admitted that his statement to police was silent regarding the description of the accused, which also suggested that he had not identified the accused after his release, it added.

The bench further noted that two other prosecution witnesses also said to have seen the kidnappers at the time of abduction, but they did not mention the description of accused persons to police when the FIR was lodged and at the time of recording of their statements before police.

According to the prosecution, the appellant along with his accomplices came at the house of the captive on June 16, 2020 in police uniform and took him away on the ground that the victim had teased the daughter of an army officer on WhatsApp. They asked his father to come at the cybercrime office of the Federal Investigation Agency in Gulistan-i-Jauhar.

When the complainant visited the FIA office, he was informed that there was no complaint against his son. Later, he received a ransom demand of Rs3 million. He paid around Rs1mto the kidnappers, it added.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2022