KARACHI: An antiterrorism court on Wednesday handed down life imprisonment to two militants of the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on charges of carrying out an improvised explosive device (IED) blast near a Rangers office in Landhi.

Inamullah alias Mulla and Muhammad Shafiq were found guilty of killing two persons and wounding eight passers-by in the Khurramabad area on March 11, 2013 by detonating the IED.

They have already been sentenced to death by a military court in 2013 for carrying out the Abbas Town bomb blast.

On Wednesday, the ATC-V judge, who conducted the trial in the judicial complex inside the central prison, pronounced his verdict reserved after recording evidence and final arguments from both sides.

The judge noted that the prosecution proved its case against the accused beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Besides life term, the court ordered the convicts to pay Rs200,000 as compensation to the legal heirs of the victims.

The judge also sentenced them to total 20-year-imprisonment for causing injuries to eight people and terrorism.

However, the court ruled that all the sentences would run concurrently.

The court kept the case against two absconding accused — Fareedullah alias Fareed and Zahidullah alias Zahid — on dormant file until their arrest or surrender.

In the verdict, the judge wrote that some mitigating circumstances did exist in this case, for which the accused could not be handed down capital punishment of death.

It stated that at the time of the commissioning of the offence as per the prosecution evidence and material available on record, both the accused were accompanied by their accomplices Zahid and Fareed, who had a remote control in their hands which the prosecution failed to recover from their possession. Therefore, the capital punishment cannot be given to them, the court ruled.

According to the prosecution, a CTD investigating officer on March 18, 2013 interrogated Inamullah and Muhammad Shafiq, who were already in custody in connection with two other bomb blast cases. They disclosed to their involvement in the Rangers headquarters blast, it added.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2022