MULTAN, Aug 21: Counsel of the accused in the Meerwala gang-rape case, under-trial at the Dera Ghazi Khan anti-terrorism court, closed defence on Wednesday.

Both defence and the prosecution had submitted a number of documents to the court to make those a part of the court file. Those were mainly newspapers relating to the incident.

The defence is likely to start its arguments from Thursday (today) and will take two days to finish the task. Then the prosecution will offer its arguments. It was the 20th day of the in-camera trial of the Meerwala case.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan had taken suo motu notice of the incident and had given three weeks to the trial court to decide the case on July 18 during the hearing of the notice.

Earlier, when the court resumed proceedings of the case, the defence counsels requested the court to give up inspector Riaz and head constable Mukhtar Ahmad as the defence witnesses. The two officials were present in the court for being summoned on the application of defence.

Subsequently, the defence counsels started re-examination of the statements of Mukhtaran Mai, her uncle Sabir Husain and Maulvi Abdul Razzaq for the alleged statements they recorded to Dera Ghazi Khan range crimes SP Mirza Abbas for a departmental inquiry to point out lapses on the part of Jatoi police. All the three recalled PWs were present in the court.

During their separate cross-examination on Wednesday, they said the police had got signed blank papers from them.

Mukhtaran Mai (PW14) said when Inspector Riaz read out her statement before the SP, she objected and made it clear that this was not her statement. To the defence queries, she confronted with the details of the incident recorded by inspector Riaz, saying that this was not her statement.

It may be added here that when SP Mirza Abbas was in Meerwala in connection with the departmental inquiry, Mukhtaran Mai and her father Ghulam Farid had addressed a press conference at the Jatoi Press Club and alleged that the police were forcing them to give certain statements which they did not want to own as truth.

When Maulvi Razzaq (PW11) was brought in the witness box, he said he would first examine the statement attributed to him by the police. He took some time to read the statement which he disowned. He said the police had obtained his signatures on blank papers forcibly. However, he partially owned the contents of the statement.

Reappearing before the court, Sabir Husain (PW13) also disowned the contents of his alleged statement during the cross-examination. He confronted most of the defence queries extracted from his alleged statement which was the part of departmental police probe in the incident.

The court adjourned proceedings of the case for Thursday (today).

Later, talking to journalists, Mukhtaran Mai ruled out possibility of any patch-up with the accused. She said if this would have been the case, then why did she knock the door of court to get justice.

She hoped the court would give exemplary punishment to the culprits so that no one in future could dare to repeat it.

Answering a question, she said the police got signed blank papers from them assuring that this inquiry (the departmental probe) had nothing to do with the case. She said the police authorities had also assured them that their statements would not be presented at any legal forum. “Under this assurance we signed blank papers to police,” she claimed.