KARACHI: The Sindh government is still mulling over challenging an antiterrorism court verdict that acquitted former SSP Rao Anwar and his 17 subordinates in a case pertaining to the extrajudicial killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud and three others in a ‘staged’ encounter in 2018.

Sindh Prosecutor General Faiz Shah told Dawn a committee was examining the acquittal judgement passed by the ATC on Jan 23 on both legal and technical grounds.

He said that two additional prosecutors general (APGs) were initially scrutinising the judgement and their recommendation would again be reviewed by an additional prosecutor general.

Asked how long the process could take, the prosecutor general replied: “We still have time to file an appeal.”

Two days before, Naqeeb’s younger brother Ali Sher Mehsud had declared that his family would file an appeal before the Sindh High Court against the acquittal of the accused police officials.

Earlier this week, the ATC-XVI judge had exonerated former SSP Rao Anwar and his team, by giving them the benefit of doubt, from the charges of kidnapping for ransom and then killing Naqeeb and three others by dubbing them as militants of banned outfits in a staged encounter on Jan 13, 2018.

The trial took five years to complete and during that period Naqeeb’s father, who was complainant in the case, passed away.

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2023