KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has set aside a sessions court order directing the provincial government to pay diyat to the legal heirs of two persons died in a traffic accident.

In 2023, the Sindh prosecutor general had filed an appeal before the SHC against the 2022 order of an additional district and sessions judge (Central) who, while acquitting a driver accused of killing a woman and her son in an accident, directed the provincial government to pay diyat to the heirs of the victims.

At the outset of the hearing, an additional prosecutor general submitted before a division bench that he was not pressing the appeal against the acquittal recorded by the trial court, but pleaded to allow the same to the extent of the direction issued to the provincial government since it was not sustainable in the eyes of the law.

The bench, headed by Justice Zafar Ahmed Rajput, observed that the payment of diyat under Section 53 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) was one of the punishments which an offender was liable to pay.

Provincial govt is not liable to pay diyat in case of acquittal of accused, remark judges

“Nowhere in the PPC or any other law it has been provided that in case the accused is acquitted of the charge, the provincial government is liable to pay diyat to the legal heirs of victims,” the bench observed.

“Hence, the trial court while issuing such directions to the provincial government has exceeded from its jurisdiction, therefore such directions of the trial court are set aside,” it concluded.

The accused driver, Mohammad Rashid, was charged with knocking down a motorcyclist, Mohammad Amir, his wife, Sehar, and their son, Huzaifa, in 2015 while driving a vehicle within the remit of the Gulbahar police station. The woman and her son died in the accident. The sessions court had acquitted the accused after the legal heirs of the victims had forgiven him.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2025