It’s an extremely worrisome situation that so many prisoners who have been handed down death sentence by the trial courts are winning their acquittal by the higher courts thanks to poor investigation of the cases conducted by the police, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Tuesday.
The heirs of the slain persons find themselves in extremely dangerous situation when killers of their kin escape gallows and come out of the prisons.
There are so many examples of such kind. But in the latest example, the Lahore High Court on Tuesday acquitted a murder accused, Akhtar Abbas, who was found guilty of killing his sister and awarded death by a trial court.
A two-judge bench of the Lahore High Court comprising Justice Shahram Sarwar Chaudhry and Justice Muhammad Amjad Rafiq acquitted Akhtar Abbas after five years saying there was contradiction in the medical report and the statement recorded by the eyewitnesses did not conform to the medical report.
The court overturned the death sentence on the grounds that the eyewitnesses were not present on the occasion and the trial court had also acquitted three other co-accused in this case.
Amjad Iqbal advocate appeared before the court on behalf of the accused. A sessions court had acquitted three co-accused: Mudassar, Ansar and Javed while it awarded death sentence to Akhtar Abbas.
Karana police in Sargodha registered a murder case of Rukhsana Bibi against the accused. The sessions court after finding accused Abbas guilty of murder of his sister pronounced death sentence for him.
The Punjab deputy prosecutor general opposed the acquittal plea of the accused in the court.
Reporter Malik Ashraf