Police officers walk past Pakistan’s Supreme Court building, in Islamabad, Pakistan, April 6, 2022. REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
After spending 15 years behind bars, four men accused of murdering six police officers in a terrorism case were acquitted by the Supreme Court, which found the prosecution’s case was riddled with inconsistencies and lacked credible evidence.
In an eight-page judgment written by Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, the Supreme Court overturned the Lahore High Court’s decision that had upheld the death sentences of the accused, ruling that the case was riddled with serious legal and evidentiary flaws.
“The prosecution has not presented any independent evidence, direct or circumstantial, that could reasonably connect the appellants to the commission of the crime. The evidence presented by the prosecution is replete with material inconsistencies and inherent improbabilities that cast serious doubt on the veracity of the prosecution’s case,” the ruling states.
The court observed that it is a well-established principle of criminal jurisprudence that if a single circumstance creates reasonable doubt in a prudent mind about the guilt of the accused, the benefit of that doubt must rest with the accused.
Such a benefit, he added, should not be granted as a matter of grace or concession but as a matter of right.
“The competent courts below, although they did not notice the aforementioned material weaknesses and doubts in the prosecution’s case, have fallen into a serious error of law by declaring the appellants guilty of the crimes with which they are charged,” the ruling states.
A three-member bench headed by Justice Muhammad Hashim Kakar found serious flaws in the prosecution’s case.
The court noted that the two key witnesses were not in uniform and were unarmed at the time of the incident as they had completed their patrol duty and were at the hotel in plain clothes.
“Secondly, when one police officer had already lost his life and five police officers were lying seriously injured in the hotel, the version of the alleged witnesses that they immediately started chasing the attackers seems very unnatural and does not appeal to a prudent mind.”
The court noted that such conduct is contrary to the normal course of human behavior.
Furthermore, he added, the version of the alleged witnesses regarding the identification of the aggressors also seems doubtful. According to them, the attackers suddenly arrived at the scene and immediately resorted to indiscriminate firing.
The court observed that in such a situation, where the entire episode allegedly occurred in a very short span of time and under a sudden and life-threatening attack, it is not reasonable that the alleged witnesses could carefully observe and remember minute details of the assailants such as their height, age, build and the clothes they were wearing.
In such a situation, the normal conduct of a person is to save his own life and not meticulously note down the physical characteristics of the attackers, the court added.
“The alleged witnesses have also not been able to establish their presence at the scene of the event through any independent or impeccable evidence.”
The ruling further noted that a major flaw in the prosecution’s case was the manner in which the identification parade was conducted.
“It is already a well-established legal principle that the identification parade of each accused must be held separately and that a joint identification parade of multiple accused is unsafe and unreliable. This practice has been consistently disapproved of by this Court. The holding of a joint identification parade has been repeatedly disapproved of by this Court.”
