LAHORE: A Supreme Court (SC) full-bench consisting of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawad S Khawaja and Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday reserved judgment in the Taxila church terrorism case on Friday.
The bench directed the Punjab Police inspector general (IGP) to take steps for investigating terrorist attacks by applying modern scientific methods and train investigators according to present needs. The bench was hearing appeals against death sentence awarded to three alleged terrorists on charges of hurling a grenade at a Taxila church in August 2002, which killed four women and injured 25.
The CJP pointed out that the case investigation was full of flaws and omissions and it was difficult for the court to do justice owing to lack of evidence. Justice Ramday observed that if innocent people were hanged, people including Christians would not be pleased and the court could not allow hanging of people until there was evidence against them. “The poor nation is suffering at hands of police inefficiency”, the CJP said asking DIG Mushtaq Sukhera to do something for establishing credibility of police in eyes of the masses.
The CJP said that prosecution seriously needed improvement, as it was bringing a bad name to police. The court was astonished to know that Investigating Officer (IO) Saadat Mehdi had left many loopholes in the investigation and by-passed material facts giving an impression that he only wanted the convicts to be hanged so that his performance could be praised.
The IO learnt from witnesses that the convicts including Ayaz, Saifullah etc were already in police custody in a case registered in Murree and another in Pirwadai but he did not bother to see the relevant record to ascertain the facts and also did not take into account some other important facts. The court also expressed concerns over the identification parade of the accused.
