KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Monday dismissed the appeals of state against acquittal of 13 workers of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in the cases pertaining to recovery of illicit arms and explosives from party’s now sealed Nine Zero headquarters in 2015.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha also dismissed appeals of 13 other party activists against their conviction handed down by the trial court in identical cases.

It further turned down a set of criminal revision appeals of state for enhancement of sentences of the convicted appellants.

The appellants filed appeals through their lawyers impugning their conviction in identical cases. In April last year, an antiterrorism court had acquitted 13 MQM activists and sentenced as many for a period of imprisonment between 10 and six years.

Upholds conviction of as many activists in possession of illicit weapon cases

The bench in its judgement said that the Ranges raid was motivated to capture Faisal Mota, one of the absconders in journalist Wali Babar murder case, and his accomplices and thus raid was not based on any malafide.

It further observed that the convicts were caught red-handed with firearms and named in the FIRs.

“Based on the above discussion we have no doubt that the prosecution has proved its case against the appellants beyond a reasonable doubt for the offence for which they have been convicted and sentenced and hereby uphold the impugned judgment and dismiss all the appeals,” the order said.

About the appeals against acquittal, the bench noted that the parameters of an appeal against acquittal to succeed were much narrower than in case of an appeal against conviction.

“We find that it is quite natural during a raid for suspects to grab any firearm which was available and in fact the appellants had recovered from them assorted firearms ranging from pistol to SMGs to 3G Rifles to LMGs, however it does not particularly appeal to logic, reasons or commonsense that each and every one of the appellants would have a bomb which was useless without a launcher especially when no launcher was recovered from 9 Zero during the raid,” it added.

The counsel for state has not been able to point out any legal infirmity in the impugned order as to bring it within the preview of an appeal against acquittal.

About enhancement of sentence, the bench noted that state wanted all the sentences be enhanced to the maximum 14-year term, but the maximum imprisonment would be reserved for the most grievous of cases where no mitigating factor existed at all.

“In this case the firearms were recovered from each of the accused without any firing actually being made on any party as the accused surrendered and as such we find that the maximum sentence cannot be justified based on the particular facts and circumstances of this case,” it concluded.

The 26 party activists along with senior leader Amir Khan were arrested by the Rangers during a pre-dawn raid at the MQM’s Nine Zero headquarters on March 11, 2015 and subsequently police had registered 52 cases against them.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2022