KARACHI, Sept 27: The Supreme Court rejected on Friday a petition moved by the killer of a young city barrister for review of its judgment dismissing his appeal against his conviction and death sentence.
Petitioner Shaikh Mohammad Amjad was tried by an anti-terrorism court for kidnapping for ransom and murdering 24-year-old Shakir Lateef in July-August 2001. Shakir had then recently returned home after being called to the Bar in England.
According to the prosecution, Amjad invited Shakir to the Marriott Hotel for legal advice on July 29, 2001, and the lawyer was not seen or heard of thereafter. Shakir’s father, Fazlur Rahman, who was the complainant in the case, returned to Karachi from Islamabad the same evening. As he came out of the plane, he received an anonymous call made from his son’s mobile phone. The caller told him that Shakir had been kidnapped and that he would be released only on payment of Rs20 million as ransom.
Fazlur Rahman was threatened by the caller that Shakir would be killed if any attempt to seek police help was made by anybody. Amjad continued repeating his demand and threats till he was arrested while making a call at Gizri on August 4, 2001. Shakir had by then been killed and his body was recovered from a Defence bungalow on Amjad’s tip-off.
Amjad confessed to his crime, though tried to exculpate himself by claiming that the glass in which he offered Shakir orange juice at his bungalow after their Marriott meeting “accidentally” contained potassium cyanide as he had used the tumbler “in an experiment for making liquid gold”.
Besides video-cassettes and corroborative statements of prosecution witnesses, the prosecution also used a letter written by the accused to the presiding officer of the anti-terrorist court asserting that the case was not triable by the ATC but, at the same time, substantially implicating himself in the commission of the offence.
The ATC awarded him death penalty on two counts, ordered confiscation of his movable and immovable property in favour of the government and asked him to pay Rs200,000 to the legal heirs of his victim by way of compensation (Diyat). The Sindh High Court upheld the ATC judgment and the Supreme Court also dismissed an appeal against it in February 2003.
Amjad moved a review petition seeking recording of fresh evidence once again and commutation of his sentence to life term. Dismissing the petition, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Nazim Hussain Siddiqui, Mian Mohammad Ajmal and Falak Sher held at Islamabad that, under the SC rules, a plea for review of a judgment in a criminal case could be made on the ground of “an error apparent on the face of record”. The error should be so glaring that no court would permit it to remain a part of its proceedings.
“In the instant case”, the bench observed, “the entire evidence was dealt with in a comprehensive manner and neither any material fact was ignored nor was there any misreading or non-reading of evidence. The court does not normally interfere in quantum of sentence in review, if the sentence has been imposed after taking into consideration all the material available and keeping in view the intrinsic value of the evidence”. It was a brutal murder committed by the petitioner and the petitioner alone, the bench further observed.
Additional Advocate-General Qazi Khalid Ali contested the petition on behalf of the state and Advocate Sardar Mohammad Ishaq Khan for the complainant. Advocate Mushtaq Ahmed Khan appeared for the petitioner.