KARACHI, July 7: The Sindh High Court has taken notice of lack of interest by the state counsel in cases, and asked them to appear in their particular cases fully prepared. The court is duty bond to warn all counsel appearing for state in different cases that either they should appear in particular cases fully prepared or they should quit the job so that they could be replaced by better hands, said Justice Azizullah M Memon noted in his order.
“Further, if any instance is noted in future, he shall not be entitled to any further notice and shall be liable to be proceeded accordance with law,” the court observed.
The court was hearing an appeal by Shahzad against his conviction in a dacoity case.
The matter could not proceed as state counsel sought adjournment on the ground that he did not receive relevant papers of the appeal.
Almost in each and every case, counsel appearing for state go on making same types of statements that police paper or other relevant papers involved in Cr. Appeal/ Cr rev/ Cr Bail are not received by them, and 90 per cent of the cases listed for hearing have to be adjourned without proceeding.
“Needless to say that the above stated prevailing situation is being faced only because the relevant quarters either do not know relevant rules or if they knew they are intentionally floating the same or are interested to get proceedings postponed on pretext of non-sufficiency of police paper,” Justic Memon noted.
The court further observed that the AG Sindh be apprised about this state of affairs so that permanent arragement could be made for the procuring relevant papers and placing the same in the hands of state counsel respectively.
HARKAT MEN: The Sindh High Court on Thursday adjourned the hearing of appeals filed by activists of banned Harkatul Mujahideen Al-Alami, convicted in the US consulate car bombing case, on non appearance of defence counsel.
SHC’s division bench, comprising Justice Syed Ali Aslam Jaffery and Justice Maqbool Baqar, taking notice non-appearance of defence counsel issued intimation notice to convicts Mohammad Imran and Hafiz Zubair to engage counsel for arguing their appeals, otherwise the court would engage lawyers for them on state expenses.
The chief and general secretary of the banned militant outfit Mohammad Imran and Mohammad Haneef were sentenced to death while two other members Sharib Arsalan Farooqui and Hafiz Mohammad Zubair were awarded life term by Anti Terrorism Court ATC Karachi in a car bomb attack on the US consulate in April 2003.
They were accused of blowing up the explosive laden pickup near US consulate on June 14, 2002 resulting 12 people were killed while 43 injured in the blast.
The trial court, however, acquitted Mohammad Ashraf Khan in said case on lack of evidence and ordered that case of remaining absconding co-accused be kept at dormant file.—PPI