PESHAWAR, Dec 7: An anti-terrorism court transferred here on Tuesday a triple-murder case to the district and sessions judge.

The presiding officer of the court, Shahjee Rehman Khan, observed that the case was not one of terrorism as defined in the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

The court directed the parties to appear before the district and sessions judge on Dec 11. Mr Rehman has recently been appointed as judge of the ATC in Peshawar after completion of the contract of his predecessor Akhter Zareef Khan. Since his appointment, he has transferred a number of cases to the regular court under Section 23 of the ATA, 1997.

As the terrorism-related cases in Peshawar were few in numbers, the government used to refer various ordinary cases to the ATC which did not amount to terrorism. Cases of hundreds of peasants of Charsadda district were also referred to the ATC as the police concerned had included Section 7 of the ATA in different FIRs.

Among the legal circles, Mr Rehman is widely known as a judge who decides cases strictly on merit. In the present case, known as the Sunny murder case, three persons were killed in a mysterious fashion. Samir Zia alias Sunny, his friend Riaz and Jhangrez, were killed by unknown persons inside his residence in Gulbahar Colony on July 24, 2003.

Due to public outcry the local police had arrested a large number of people. Various persons were kept in detention and a number of habeas corpus cases were filed in local courts.

Finally, the police charged Aamir Shehzad, Shahid and Shakeel for the commission of the offence. The police charged them with taking away Rs2.2 million from the residence of Sunny.

The accused had pleaded not guilty to the offence and retracted the confession statements they had earlier recorded. They claimed that they were kept in illegal detention for various days, severely tortured and forced to record their confession. Till now, the ATC had recorded evidence of 28 prosecution witnesses.