ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has ruled that a person cannot be declared guilty solely on the basis of being a fugitive, adding that if someone goes into hiding due to fear of police harassment or arrest, it cannot be treated as an admission of guilt.
A two-member bench of the apex court, comprising Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, issued the judgment in an appeal filed by Muhammad Iqbal against the ruling of the Sindh High Court dated June 18, 2025. The court allowed the appeal, setting aside the conviction and sentence awarded to the appellant by the trial courts and later upheld by the high court, acquitting him of the charge. The court ordered the release of Muhammad Iqbal in a 20-year-old murder case.
“The conviction and sentence awarded to the appellant by the learned courts are hereby set aside, and he is acquitted of the charge. He shall be released forthwith, if not required in any other case,” stated an eight-page judgment authored by Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim.
A case was registered on April 29, 2006 in the Baldia Town area of Karachi, in which Muhammad Iqbal was accused of murdering two individuals. The trial court had sentenced him to life imprisonment, a decision later upheld by the Sindh High Court, which ruled that his arrest 14 years after the incident was proof of his guilt.
The court held that “it is better to acquit ten guilty persons than to convict one innocent individual.” It further ruled that a person cannot be declared guilty merely on the basis of being a fugitive. “If someone goes into hiding due to fear of police harassment or arrest, it cannot be treated as an admission of guilt,” the judgment read, adding that no question regarding the accused’s absconding was put to him in his statement under Section 342 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The court noted that according to law, any evidence not presented to the accused cannot be used against him.
The court held that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, pointing out that no reasonable explanation was provided for the delay in lodging the FIR, and the bullet casings recovered from the crime scene were not sent to a forensic laboratory. “The evidence brought on record by the prosecution is replete with doubts,” the court held, adding that it is now a well-settled principle of criminal jurisprudence that even a single circumstance creating reasonable doubt in the mind of a prudent person is sufficient to entitle the accused to its benefit as of right, not as a matter of grace.
The judgment emphasized that under Islamic jurisprudence and law, it has been an established principle for over 1,400 years that the benefit of doubt must always go to the accused.
The court held that mere absconding is therefore not conclusive proof of guilt, adding that it is trite law that absconding is, at best, corroborative evidence and cannot by itself be treated as substantive evidence to sustain a conviction.
