The Supreme Court has regretted that politicians in general, and parliamentarians in particular, are so vulnerable that they can be implicated even in capital positions without any justification and with bad intentions on the part of a public servant.
"Since MPs represent the people of their respective constituencies, the magistrate was expected to be attentive and stay within the parameters of section 364 of the CrPC, but he ignored this important aspect and continued to incorporate their names in the statement." said an eight-page judgment written by Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail. Justice Mandokhail was heading a three-judge bench that acquitted one person, an MQM politician, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder by a trial court in 2016 on the basis of his confessional statement. The Sindh High Court upheld his conviction. The ruling noted that the prosecution’s case converges solely on a judicial confession attributed to the appellant, which alone formed the basis of the conviction.
"Therefore, it is imperative to examine with utmost care, caution and circumspection whether such confession satisfies the well-established requirements of law, i.e., whether it was voluntary, true and inspiring confidence, particularly when retracted.
"A fundamental defect in this case concerns the manner in which the appellant was charged," states the sentence. He noted that Ranger detained the appellant in 2016, approximately six years after the registration of the FIR under preventive detention under Section 11EEEE of the ATA 1997. In this regard, notification from the federal or provincial government was required, allowing law enforcement officers to detain the appellant for a period not exceeding three months after recording the grounds. However, there is no such notification in the file that justifies preventive detention. He noted that during this arrest, the appellant admitted his guilt to the Rangers, after which he was handed over to the police on June 21, 2016, a date recorded as the date of arrest in the case. The order stated that the appellant remained in police custody for eight days, after which his statement under Section 164 CrPC was recorded, in which he allegedly confessed guilty.
"A confessional statement is an admission of guilt by an accused before a magistrate during the investigation, which must be voluntary and true," says the sentence. He further explained that section 364 of the CrPC, read with the rules and orders of the high court, requires the magistrate to ensure, before recording a statement, that the accused is making a voluntary and true statement, and is free from influence, pressure, inducement, threat or coercion.
