Police officers walk past the Supreme Court of Pakistan building, in Islamabad, Pakistan April 6, 2022. REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
After spending 15 years behind bars, four men accused of killing six police officers in a terrorism case were acquitted by the Supreme Court, which found the prosecution case riddled with inconsistencies and lacking credible evidence.
In an eight-page judgment written by Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the Lahore High Court which had upheld the death sentence of the accused, finding that the case was fraught with serious legal and evidentiary flaws.
“The prosecution has failed to produce independent evidence, direct or circumstantial, which could reasonably connect the appellants with the commission of the offence. The evidence produced by the prosecution is replete with material inconsistencies and inherent implausibilities which cast serious doubt on the veracity of the prosecution’s case,” the judgment said.
The Court observed that it is a well-settled principle of criminal jurisprudence that if any single circumstance creates a reasonable doubt in a prudent mind as to the guilt of the accused, the benefit of such doubt must accrue to the accused.
Such an advantage, he adds, must be granted not as a matter of grace or concession but as a matter of right.
“The courts below, while failing to point out the aforesaid material infirmities and doubts in the prosecution case, thereby committed a serious error of law in finding the appellants guilty of the offenses charged against them,” the judgment said.
A three-member bench headed by Justice Muhammad Hashim Kakar found serious flaws in the prosecution’s case.
The court observed that the two key witnesses were not in uniform and were unarmed at the time of the incident, as they had been carrying out 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 eyewitnesses that they immediately set off in pursuit of the attackers seems completely unnatural and does not please a prudent mind.”
The court noted that such conduct is contrary to the normal course of human behavior.
Furthermore, she adds, the version of alleged eyewitnesses regarding the identification of the attackers also seems doubtful. According to them, the attackers arrived suddenly on the scene and immediately resorted to indiscriminate fire.
The bench observed that in such a situation, where the entire episode would have occurred within a very short span of time and in a sudden life-threatening attack, it does not appeal to reason that the alleged eyewitnesses could have keenly observed and remembered the minute details of the assailants such as their height, age, complexion and the clothes they were wearing.
In such a situation, the normal behavior of a person is to save his own life rather than meticulously noting the physical characteristics of the attackers, the court added.
“The alleged eyewitnesses also failed to establish their presence at the scene with independent or irrefutable evidence.”
The judgment further noted that a major flaw in the prosecution’s case lay in the manner in which the identification procedure was conducted.
“It is now a well-settled principle of law that the identification parade of each accused must be held separately and that a joint identification parade of several accused is dangerous and unreliable. Such a practice has always been disapproved of by this Court. Holding a joint identification parade has been repeatedly disapproved of by this Court.”
