ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) has dismissed the jail appeals of six convicts in a case involving the murder of five people in Kasur, while upholding their life imprisonment sentences.
The court has also rejected appeals filed by the complainant seeking enhancement of the convicts’ sentences.
A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Hashim Khan Kakar and comprising Justice Salahuddin Panhwar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, issued the decision.
The court declared the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) verdict to be correct holding that there was no legal defect in it. The court expressed full confidence in the testimony of eyewitnesses, while medical reports confirmed that the deceased had sustained multiple gunshot wounds.
The post-mortems of those killed by the firing were conducted immediately during the night, and the FIR of the incident was also registered promptly.
As per the case in January 2014, five people were killed in an incident of indiscriminate firing near the Mustafaabad Toll Plaza in Kasur.
The trial court had sentenced seven accused to death four times each, while acquitting three others. Subsequently, the Lahore High Court (LHC) acquitted one accused and converted the death sentences of six convicts into life imprisonment, which it upheld.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday commuted the death sentence of a convicted murderer Jawad Ali to life imprisonment in a murder case. The court granted this relief on the basis of the convict’s young age at the time of the offence.
A three-member bench of the apex, headed by Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan and comprising Justice Malik Shahzad Khan and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, issued the verdict after completing the hearing. In its decision, the court noted that the deceased’s father Muhammad Amjad and uncle Muhammad Asif were eyewitnesses to the incident, and since the incident occurred in daylight, there was no doubt regarding the identification of the accused. The court further noted that verification of evidence showed that medical evidence, post-mortem report and forensic report fully confirmed the occurrence.
It is pertinent to mention here that on July 2017, Jawad Ali murdered a young man named Talha Amjad in the Nankana Sahib area. The trial court, after proving the charge, sentenced the accused to death along with a fine of two hundred thousand rupees.
