LAHORE, Dec 16: A division bench of the Lahore High Court has held that the benefit of the doubt cannot be given to an accused if incidents in the commission of a crime speak for themselves and certain presumptions arising during the course of trial or appeal are effectively rebutted.

Comprising Justice Ali Nawaz Chauhan and Justice Rustam Ali Malik, the division bench explained in a recent judgment the nature of element of doubt, holding that it was not available to the accused if the court was convinced that the prosecution case was acceptable.

The court rejected the appeal of Muhammad Iqbal Shah and Abdur Rehman, who were sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court of Sargodha for killing two constables while boarding a police van, commuting them back to jail from court in March this year. They were charged with throwing red chilies in the eyes of the policemen and snatching their rifles to shoot at them.

The two convicts, along with five accused Nasrullah, Mukhtar Shah, Pervez Ahmad, Mahboob and Maqbool Ahmad, attacked the police guard in the van when it was about to leave a court in Khushab after they had attended courts as under-trial prisoners. The accused were also supplied firearms by Karam Husain Shah, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the ATC.

Constables Ashiq Ali and Shafqaat Ali were killed in the incident after which all the seven fled the scene. The police, however, arrested five of the accused. Mukhtar Shah was killed in an encounter the same evening and Nasrullah has since been declared a proclaimed offender and is still untraceable.

The court observed while rejecting the appeal of the convicts that some doubts were inherent and some arose because of certain presumptions. But doubts were not merely through a callous denial of the incidents and their facts. A doubt could arise but it had to be honest and conscientiously entertain able.

The court, giving reference of PLD 1957 Lahore 261, AIR 1965 Allahabad 417 and AIR 1962 SC 1, held that though the establishment of the guilt was the obligation of the prosecution, the benefit of the doubt which the accused was entitled to, must be based on rational thinking and might fairly and reasonably be entertained.

The court, however, observed that the police check on the under-trial prisoners was scant at a time when they were boarding the van.It may be pointed out that 57 people, including police guard, were in the van which had a capacity of 47.