KARACHI: A sessions court on Saturday approved bail for Shahrukh Jatoi and other suspects in a high-profile Shahzeb Khan murder case after the deceased’s father told that he will have no objection if his son’s killers are set free.
The District and Sessions Judge South granted bail to the suspects and directed them to furnish a surety of Rs500,000 each.
Aurangzeb Khan, the victim’s father, submitted an affidavit in the court today, confirming that he had pardoned the suspects in the name of Allah Almighty back in 2013. He added that an out-of-court settlement was reached with the suspects.
Twenty-year-old Shahzeb Khan, son of a DSP, was gunned down on the night of December 24, 2012 in Karachi’s Defence Housing Society.
The incident had sparked widespread outrage across the country and attracted much media attention, prompting the then Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to take suo motu notice of the murder.
Jatoi, and his friend Siraj Talpur, were sentenced to death while his younger brother Sajjad Talpur and their cook Ghulam Murtaza Lashari were awarded life in prison by an anti-terrorism court.
Subsequently, the convicts challenged their sentences in the high court, requesting it to set the sentences aside.
Jatoi, the key suspect, challenged his sentence on the ground that he was a juvenile at the time of committing the crime, therefore, he could not be tried under the anti-terrorism law.
The appellants argued that the crime didn’t come within the ambit of the anti-terrorism law, thus, they should have been tried by an ordinary court instead of an anti-terrorism court.
The SHC appellate bench overturned their sentences and sent the case back to a sessions court to conduct the trial of the suspects afresh.
The bench directed the sessions court to determine whether the murder comes within the ambit of the anti-terrorism law.
It should be noted that since the family of the deceased had reached an out-of-court settlement with the convicts and pardoned them, the point whether the crime comes in the jurisdiction of the terrorism law needed a rethink.
The judges observed that the sentences were awarded by the trial court without fulfilling the legal requirements.
