KARACHI, March 24: A district court on Monday acquitted Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari in the Justice Nizam murder case.

Additional District and Sessions judge Soofia Latif announced the order after recording final arguments on an acquittal application from both sides.

“The court after examining the prosecution papers has found no evidence which may connect Asif Ali Zardari with the alleged offence. Since there was no probability of conviction, therefore the court allowed the application and acquitted Mr Zardari under Section 249-A of CrPC of the case,” the order said.

Defence counsel Shahadat Awan had moved the application under Section 249-A of the Criminal Procedure Code (power of a magistrate to acquit the accused at any stage) for cancellation of charges against Mr Zardari.

He said it was a unique criminal case in which five charge-sheets had been filed by investigation agencies in four years, in addition to dishonest improvements made in each report every time. He argued that two sets of accused had been charge-sheeted in the case at different times.

The counsel said that the so-called confessional statements of Babar Sindhu and Akhtar Javed Pirzada had been obtained under duress. As mentioned in their written application, they disclosed that they had been tortured and their signatures had been obtained on a blank paper. They later prayed for exclusion of such statements from the investigation, Mr Awan added.

He pointed out that no notice under Section 265-C of the CrPC had been served on Mr Zardari and any statement recorded in his absence or not giving him an opportunity to cross-examine the persons making the statements could not be used against him.

He said the so-called statements could not be termed statements of approvers as the consent of legal heirs of the deceased had not been obtained for declaring them approvers which was a legal requirement.

Mr Awan alleged that the then government and its agencies had falsely implicated Mr Zardari in the case of murder of a former judge and a lawyer in order to turn the bench and bar against him. He said his client had failed to get speedy justice. He could not be even indicted in the case despite the passage of over 12 years, the counsel said.

He said that Mr Zardari had been remanded from jail to police custody in a mala fide and illegal manner by an anti-terrorism court on May 10, 1999, and he was maltreated and tortured in order to extract a confessional statement of police’s choice.

Special Public Prosecutor Niamat Ali Randhawa, who represented the state, did not oppose the acquittal plea.

The prosecution had filed charges of double murder against Mr Zardari, Akhtar Javed Pirzada, Bilal Shaikh and Babar Sindhu. Justice (retd) Nizam Ahmed of the Sindh High Court and his son Nadeem Ahmed, a lawyer, were shot dead in an attack on June 10, 1996, in front of their PECHS residence.

Retired group captain Sikandar, who was brother-in-law of the judge, had lodged an FIR (357/1996) at the Ferozabad police station under Section 302/34 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The murder was attributed to a dispute over a prized plot near Awami Markaz as Justice Nizam Ahmed had opposed its commercialisation and illegal allotment.