PESHAWAR: Setting aside his acquittal by a trial court around seven years ago, the Peshawar High Court has sentenced a man to life imprisonment for killing a woman.
A bench comprising Justice Sahibzada Asadullah and Justice Farah Jamshed accepted an appeal filed by the deceased woman’s son, who was also injured in the incident.
It declared that the prosecution had established its case against the suspect through convincing, reliable and confidence-inspiring evidence but the trial court failed to appreciate the material circumstances in their proper perspective.
The bench convicted Mohammad Shahwaid under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) for the murder of Riffat Begum and sentenced him to life imprisonment with a fine of Rs500,000. In default of payment, he will undergo simple imprisonment for six more months.
Awards life imprisonment to him
The court also convicted him of injuring the complainant and his sister, sentencing him to seven years of rigorous imprisonment on each of the two counts, with a fine of Rs200,000 for each offence.
It declared that all sentences would run concurrently.
The convict, who was present in the courtroom, was taken into custody and sent to prison.
He was acquitted by an additional sessions judge in Kohat on June 1, 2019, prompting the complainant, Behlol Ahsan, to challenge that judgement in the high court.
The suspect had been charged in an FIR registered at Ustarzai police station in Kohat on April 16, 2016, under various PPC provisions.
In his complaint, Behlol Ahsan reported from the emergency department of KDA Hospital, Kohat, where he was receiving treatment for his injuries, that he was present in a room of his house with his mother, Riffat Begum, sister Naima Begum and father Ali Raza when the suspect, armed with a firearm, entered the house and opened fire on them.
As a result, the complainant, his mother and his sister sustained firearm injuries, while his father remained unharmed.
They were shifted to hospital, where Riffat Begum was referred to a hospital in Peshawar for further treatment. However, she succumbed to her injuries on May 25, 2016.
Regarding the motive, the prosecution alleged that the suspect had pressured the complainant to establish a friendship with him and opened fire on the family after he refused.
The defence maintained that the complainant’s father, while under the influence of alcohol, had fired at his wife during a domestic quarrel, injuring the complainant and his sister in the process.
Lawyer Kabir Imam appeared for the appellant and contended that the suspect had been directly nominated in the FIR, while the evidence on record, including the testimony of the deceased’s family, clearly implicated him in the offence.
“The testimony of the injured eyewitnesses, their natural presence at the place of occurrence, the injuries sustained by them, the medical evidence confirming those injuries, the prompt reporting of the matter, and the motive emerging from the relationship and discord between the parties, when examined collectively, form a coherent and mutually corroborative chain of circumstances pointing towards the criminal responsibility of the suspect,” the bench observed in its 44-page detailed judgement.
It added that unfortunately, the trial court, instead of evaluating the evidence in its entirety, appeared to have approached the material circumstances in isolation, thereby overlooking their cumulative evidentiary effect.
Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2026
