KARACHI, March 13 An anti-terrorism court acquitted on Friday five alleged militants of a banned organisation in a 2002 killing case of seven Christian workers of a charity.

Judge Abdul Ghafoor Memon of the ATC-II exonerated Mohammad Asif alias Pasha, Zubairuddin alias Sharjeel, Mohammad Atif, Wajahat and Mohammad Arshad from all charges due to a lack of evidence against them.

The judge also ordered the authorities concerned to release the men forthwith if not required in any other case.

The five men, stated to be members of the banned outfit, Tehrik-i-Islami Lashkar-i-Mohammadi, were tried on charges of killing seven staffers of the NGO, Idara Amn-o-Insaf, in its Rimpa Plaza office in the Garden police limits on Sept 25, 2002.

It was pointed out in the judgment that the prosecution did not produce ample evidence in court to establish its case against the accused.

The court found glaring contradictions not only in the statement of star witness Robin Peera but also in the statements of other prosecution witnesses. Such contradictions, the verdict says, cast doubts on the case of the prosecution.

Besides, the court also pointed out lacunae in the process of the identification parade of the accused.

According to the verdict, the evidence of the identification parade of the accused was uncertain as the two judicial magistrates who had conducted the identification parades of the five accused deposed before the trial court that at the time of identification parades, the accused complained to them that the police had shown their faces to the witness, Robin Peera, who later identified them during the process.

The judicial magistrates also deposed that they had mentioned the complaints of the accused in the identification parade memos. The court did not rely on the confessional statements of the accused and ruled that the statements recorded in police custody under Section 161 of the criminal procedure code could not be treated as sufficient evidence. Some flaws and contradictions had cast doubts on the prosecution's case, therefore, it was not fit for conviction, the court observed in its judgment.

The verdict concluded that after considering the material evidence that came on record the court was of the considered view that the prosecution had failed to prove its case against the accused.

In all, the prosecution had examined 20 prosecution witnesses in the case.

Seven Christian workers of the charity - Iqbal Allah Rakha, Benjiman Sadiq, Kamran Anjum, Jan Muneer, Aslam Martin, Mushtaq Roshan and Edwin Foster - were killed and Robin Peera was wounded in the 2002 incident.

Six years later, three accused - Mohammad Asif alias Pasha, Zubairuddin alias Sharjeel and Mohammad Atif - were arrested by the CID police in March 2008 in some other cases but during interrogation they had allegedly confessed to their involvement in the Christian killing case.

According to the prosecution, they allegedly disclosed that they had first administered poisonous injections to the staff and later shot them dead.

Their co-accused, Wajahat and Mohammad Arshad, were arrested in Lahore on May 15, 2008 in another case. However, the prosecution claimed that the accused during interrogation had also confessed to having killed the charity's workers. Their associate, Abid, was declared absconder in the case.

The case (FIR205/02) was registered at the Garden police station under Section 302 (murder) and 324 (attempted murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code, read with Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, on the complaint of Zafar Iqbal, the administrator of the NGO.

In his final arguments, the special public prosecutor, Taseer Khan, said that the star witness, Robin Peera, identified all the accused during the two identification parades conducted by as many judicial magistrates.

He said that the accused belonged to a banned militant outfit and were allegedly involved in a number of cases.

He submitted that besides the statements of the prosecution witnesses, the medial evidence also corroborated the prosecution's case.

The prosecutor prayed to the court to hand down capital punishment to the accused as he had proved his case beyond a shadow of a doubt.

However, defence counsel Naeem Qureshi submitted that the prosecution had failed to establish its case against his clients.

He pointed out glaring contradictions in the statements of the star witness, Robin Peera, adding that the prosecution did not produce any supporting evidence in order to determine his status of star witness.

He said that the prosecution's claim that the accused were arrested in some other cases and during interrogation confessed to their involvement in this case, was totally baseless.

Mr Qureshi maintained that the police had implicated his clients only to improve their position since the incident took place in 2002 but the police remained clueless about the culprits for a long time.

He concluded that the identification parades of the accused could not be used as valid evidence as they were not held in accordance with the law since the photos of the accused had appeared in the media before the identification parade while the process also lacked other legal formalities. He prayed to the court to acquit his clients.