MANSEHRA: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) circuit bench at Abbottabad has set aside verdict of an anti-terrorism court in the car gang-rape case and ordered retrial at lower court. “The high court has asked the district and sessions judge to conduct retrial but without any further evidence and statements,” stated Mohammad Arshad Awan advocate, lawyer for the victim, a first-year student. The Abbottabad bench, comprising Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Qalandar Ali Khan, after hearing arguments of counsels from both sides, set aside the ATC verdict pronounced on March 6 this year and quashed section 7 of the anti-terrorism act. The widely condemned gang-rape had taken place on May 12 last year. Qari Naseer and his two accomplices allegedly deceived a first-year student to travel in their car with help of her class fellow and two of them raped her in the moving car from Mansehra to Abbottabad. The ATC judge had handed down a sentence of 14 years imprisonment to Qari Naseer, Mohammad Faizan while Hussain Mushtaq, who didn’t commit the rape directly but drove the car from Mansehra to Abbottabad, was awarded 10 years imprisonment. Anam Bibi, said to be a class fellow of the victim, was also arrested but she was acquitted by the ATC. The accused were also present in the court when the two-member circuit bench pronounced verdict on Friday. Mohammad Arshad Awan and Mustafa Khan pleaded for the victim and Fazal Haq Abbasi, Amjad Shah, Nadeem Khan Swati, Sajjad Afzal and Mohamed Javed represented the accused. Awan said that though the case would be retried in lower court, there would be no evidence and statements now. Meanwhile, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Friday issued a contempt of court notice to vice-chancellor and registrar of University of Peshawar for non-compliance with the court order. The notice was issued by a two-member bench comprising Justice Roohul Amin Khan and Justice Younas Thaheem. The PHC had passed an order on June 25, 2015, in which the UoP was directed to restore the increment of Prof Dr Muhammad Abid, head of the Computer Science Department. After non-compliance with the court order, Dr Muhammad Abid filed contempt of court petition through his lawyer Nazir Ahmad. During hearing of the case, the petitioner’s lawyer submitted that UoP Vice Chancellor Dr Rasool Jan and Registrar Dr Syed Fazal Hadi did not comply with the court’s order even after the passage of four months. He said that both the respondent officials had committed contempt of court and thus contempt notice be issued to them to appear and explain their position. Separately, the same bench also directed the chairman Public Service Commission Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to implement the court decision within one month or else he would face contempt of court proceedings. The bench passed the directions while hearing a contempt of court petition filed by Arshad Hussain, a candidate for the post of associate professor in the Commerce College Peshawar. The petition, submitted through lawyer Shehzada Irfan Zia, claimed that the court on June 18, 2015 passed an order and directed the chairman of the commission to appoint the petitioner in grade-19 within a month.
