SC acquits death-row convicts

23 Jan, 2019

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal against acquittal of three death row convicts by the Lahore High Court (LHC) in the murder case of Asim Javed giving them benefit of doubt. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khosa dismissed the appeal challenging the LHC decision filed by deceased Asim's family after going through the arguments placed by the counsels of the litigants.
During the course of proceedings, the chief justice observed that Asim was kidnapped in March 2013 from Wah Cantt Rawalpindi and his body was found on March 12, but there were no-eye witness of his alleged murder. He observed that the timing of his death was also differently mentioned in the post-mortem and police report. In violation of the Qanoon-e-Shahadat, the police in its report showed recovering the dead body from all the accused at the same time, which created doubts in the case and made infructuous all the evidences.
Subsequently the bench dismissed the appeal and maintained the LHC's decision of acquitting the accused. Meanwhile in another similar case, the SC also dismissed an appeal challenging acquittal of another death row and two life-imprisoned convicts in the murder case of Waseem Pervaiz, resident of Dera-Khazi Khan, giving them the benefit of doubt.

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