PESHAWAR, Jan 22: The Peshawar High Court has ruled that an anti-terrorism court has no jurisdiction to deal with the cases of sexual abuse of children. A single bench of the high court, comprising Justice Malik Hamid Saeed, set aside the conviction of an appellant, Aziz Gul son of Ghani Gul, convicted by an anti-terrorism court for sexually abusing a minor boy, and remanded the case to the Mardan district and sessions judge for onward assigning it to the concerned court for retrial.

The court observed that offences under section 337 of the Pakistan Penal Code - dealing with unnatural offences against man, woman and animal - were not mentioned in the schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

An anti-terrorism court in Mardan, presided over by Shabir Ahmad Khan, had sentenced the appellant on two counts. He was sentenced to 10-year rigorous imprisonment with fine of Rs20,000 under section 377 of the PPC read with section 6 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997. He was also sentenced to seven-year rigorous imprisonment under section 364-A of the PPC dealing with abduction of a person below 14 years. The court had also ordered him to pay compensation of Rs50,000 to the victim.

State counsel Jamshed Khan stated that sexually abusing a child was worst kind of terrorism and it was even worst than killing a person. The appellant's counsel, Aqil Khan, contended that sodomy did not fall in the definition of terrorism. Only those acts which created terror in the society could be called as an act of terrorism, he added.

Appellant Aziz Gul, resident of Shehbaz Garhi (Mardan), had sexually abused a minor boy (S) aged about nine years on May 21, 2003. The boy was working with his father in their field and the father went to his residence for lunch leaving the boy in the filed.

According to the prosecution case, when the appellant found the boy alone he forcefully took the boy to a nearby sugarcane field. He covered the child's mouth and sexually molested him. After hearing the cries of the victim, some inhabitants of the area rushed to the spot and the appellant escaped from the scene. The medical examination of the victim also confirmed the occurrence of the crime.

Due to the anguish among the people after the occurrence of the crime, the government referred the case to the anti-terrorism court for trying the appellant.