Man gets 27 years in jail as IO berated for loopholes in murder probe

A model court has sentenced an accused man to a total of 27 years in prison in a murder case. Sameer Khalid, alias Sunny, was found guilty of stabbing 32-year-old Farooq Ali Khan to death and disposing of his body in a drain in Gulistan-e-Jauhar in January 2022.

Additional Sessions Judge Aziz Ur Rehman Junejo of the Model Criminal Trial Court observed that the prosecution presented sufficient evidence to prove that the accused man committed the murder by inflicting knife wounds and subsequently disposed of the body in a nullah, which was later recovered by the police.

The judge sentenced the convict to 20 years in prison for the offence of murder and ordered him to pay Rs500,000 in compensation to the legal heirs of the deceased. Should he fail to pay this amount, the accused man will face an additional six months in prison.

The judge also imposed a seven-year prison sentence on the accused man, along with a Rs50,000 fine, for committing an offence punishable under the Pakistan Penal Code’s Section 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence of

offence, or giving false information to screen offender).

However, the judge noted that the prosecution did not provide sufficient evidence to support the charges of kidnapping and mischief causing damage to property against the accused man.

Highlighting the mitigating circumstances that warranted a lesser punishment for the murder charge, the judge said: “The prosecution could not prove or even claim the motive of the accused in committing this

murder.”

He remarked that the failure of the investigating officer to collect all the necessary and relevant material evidence, and to preserve it properly as required by law, also contributed to the mitigating circumstances.

The judge said the IO could have made further efforts to gather evidence using modern technologies, but he merely relied on conventional procedures, which, although sufficient to prove the charges, left room for mitigating circumstances in sentencing the accused man to a lesser punishment.

According to state prosecutor Parvez Ahmed Qureshi, complainant Muhammad Ali reported that his son Farooq, who worked at a company on Jinnah Avenue, went missing after leaving home in his car for work on January 6, 2022.

He said that the accused Sunny, one of his son’s friends whom he contacted to inquire about Farooq’s whereabouts, claimed that Farooq had dropped him near a mosque in Block 12 of Gulistan-e-Jauhar before driving away.

During the trial, the IO testified that on January 14, he learned that the victim’s car had been found parked near Nazarat in a burnt condition.

He said that the CCTV camera footage from the surrounding areas showed an individual setting fire to the vehicle and fleeing the scene, and that this person was identified as Sameer Khalid, an employee of the deceased.

During interrogation, the officer reported, the accused man admitted to killing the victim because Farooq had allegedly sexually assaulted his sister in 2015 and 2016. The accused man led the police to the location where he had disposed of the victim’s body and concealed the weapon used in the crime.

In his statement before the judge, the accused man denied the prosecution’s charges, asserting that he had been falsely implicated in the case. An FIR had been lodged at the Sharea Faisal police station on the complaint of the victim’s father.