KARACHI: A sessions court sentenced a man to death on Thursday in a case pertaining to the 2019 murder of TV anchor Mureed Abbas and his friend over a monetary dispute.

Prime suspect Atif Zaman and his brother, Adil Zaman, were arrested and booked by the police for killing Abbas and Khizer Hayat, who were the business partners of the prime suspect, in Karachi’s Khayaban-i-Bukhari area on the night of July 9, 2019.

Daniyal Muhammad Hussain — a part of the legal team that represented the complainant, Abbas’s wife, alongside Advocate Jibran Nasir — said that Adil Zaman had been declared an absconder in the case after escaping following the cancellation of his bail by the Supreme Court’s Karachi registry.

Atif was sentenced to death on two counts of murder by the court on Thursday, while Adil’s case file remains dormant until he is arrested or appears before the court.

Abbas was a Bol News anchorperson. In the incident — which at the time was said by the police to be a “personal dispute” — he was gunned down while Hayat also received multiple bullet wounds.

Hayat was shifted to a private hospital but succumbed to his wounds, according to the police.

In October 2019, the case was transferred from an anti-terrorism court to a sessions court, with the former ruling that the offence did not fell within its ambit.