SC rejects bail plea in murder case

LAHORE
A division bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Friday turned down a bail petition of an accused of murder of model Abeera.
According to the prosecution, model Tooba alias Izma Rao killed her friend Abeera by giving her poison on refusal to help her kill Babar Javed Butt, her former husband.
Applicant’s counsel said that Zeeshan had friendship with the deceased and Tooba but had nothing to do with the killing. He said that on statement of Tooba the applicant was involved in the case, whereas there was no independent witness or proof of his involvement in the murder. He said that even it was not established that the cause of death was poison. The prosecution counsel said that according to the postmortem report the cause of death was poison and the applicant had provided it. He said that there was solid evidence that the applicant provided poison to kill Abeera. The bench after hearing the arguments rejected the bail application.
The Lahore High Court had already rejected the bail petition of Hakeem Zeeshan. According to the investigating officer (IO), Abeera wanted to become a model and she met Tooba on December 24, 2014, at a local hotel and sought her help for promotion as a model. Later, both started living together at Tooba’s house.
In March this year, police had arrested Tooba claiming that she had confessed to poisoning photojournalist, Yousuf Khokhar, by spiking his juice with cyanide at the Model Town Park, where his body was later found in November 2014. It was also alleged that she told the police that she had killed Khokhar because he provided ‘negatives’ of some of her pictures to her former husband Babar Javed Butt, which resulted in her divorce. It was alleged that in 2010 Tooba had filed an application for registration of an FIR against Butt accusing him of raping her but later withdrew it after Butt agreed to marry her.
The police also alleged that Tooba had killed Abeera after she refused to cooperate in killing Butt. According to the IO, Tooba confessed that she wanted to take revenge from her ex-husband for his cruelty and was plotting to kill him with Abeera’s help, who first agreed but later refused. Tooba held Butt responsible for the death of their two-month-old daughter.
Plea dismissed: The Lahore High Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking legislation on sale of unhealthy and prohibited meat. The petitioner stated that the sale of unhealthy and prohibited meat was on rampant due to the absence of an effective law. Counsel of the Punjab government told the court that the existing law had been amended through an ordinance enhancing the punishment from six months to five years with a fine of up to Rs2 million. The court observed that the parliament was the competent forum to make legislation. It dismissed the petition for being not maintainable.