SHC acquits man, his brother in wife killing case

The Sindh High Court (SHC) has dismissed the appeal of a man against his conviction in a case pertaining to his sister-in-law’s killing but acquitted his two brothers of the murder charges.

Kamran, Rizwan and Imran were sentenced to life imprisonment by a District Central additional district and sessions court for murdering Aasia, wife of one of the appellants, Rizwan, in the Hyderi Market area in December 2017.

The trial court had, however, acquitted the father of the appellants, Abdul Kalam, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

According to the prosecution, the complainant, Mohammad Binyamin, alleged that his sister Aasia was killed by her in-laws.

A counsel for the appellants submitted that Rizwan and Imran were falsely implicated in the case by the complainant due to enmity as Rizwan had married his sister against his wishes and the deceased was killed by Kamran, who was a mental patient, during a quarrel.

They said the incident was not witnessed by any of the witnesses and the statement of witnesses were inconsistent with each other. They requested the high court to set aside the conviction.

An additional prosecutor general and the complainant’s counsel supported the trial court judgment and said the prosecution had proved its case against the appellants.

A single bench of the high court comprising Justice Shamsuddin Abbasi after hearing the arguments observed that the conduct of the complainant in the case seemed doubtful as he implicated four persons of the family in the murder particularly when there was no eyewitness to the murder.

The SHC observed that Imran had stated in his statement that he saw his brother Kamran had already injured his sister-in-law as she refused to give him food and used abusive language and he took the deceased to a hospital with his friend.

The SHC observed that Rizwan and his father also implicated Kamran for the offence but categorically stated that he was suffering from schizophrenia.

The bench observed that Kamran had also confessed to his offence in his statement but stated that he was a patient of schizophrenia. The SHC observed that the prosecution had failed to prove its case against Rizwan and his brother Imran, and acquitted them of charges.

The SHC, however, dismissed the appeal of Kamran but observed that as the convict was a patient of schizophrenia, he needed continuous care and attention of doctor as well as proper medication till his disease was cured.

The high court observed that it would be appropriate that the convict be remanded to a psychiatric hospital to serve out his remaining period of sentence.

The SHC directed the IG prisons to maintain record of the convict as per his medical record and remission as per the prison rules.