Pending before the Sindh High Court (SHC) for 15 months without a hearing, the appeal challenging the acquittal of police officers from the Mir Murtaza Bhutto murder case was finally admitted on Thursday.
An SHC divisional bench consisting of Justice Gulzar Ahmed and Justice Shahid Anwar Bajwa heard the appeal against the acquittal of high-profile police officers and a former head of Intelligence Bureau, asking the petitioner’s advocate Omar Sial to tell the grounds on which he had challenged the court’s judgment.
The appellant had submitted that the trial judge announced the verdict through an oral order on December 5, 2009 while the written judgment was given on December 8, 2009. He added that the judgments had been back dated despite the fact that they were announced three days later, as was recorded by the press and newspaper clippings, which were attached with the appeal.
“While none of the police officers claimed in their Section 342 CrPC statements that they had fired in self defence, yet the judge in his judgment has gone to great lengths to show that the killings were a result of self defence,” the petition stated, adding that even if the point of self defence was allowed, the court has to see whether the reaction of the police was in proportion to the threat envisaged by the victims.
The petitioner further submitted that the Tribunal of Enquiry set up by the then government under the chairmanship of Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid had held in its report that the killing of Murtaza Bhutto was an extrajudicial killing and could not have taken place without the knowledge of highest federal/provincial authorities.
“While the judge had taken into account a reinvestigation report by the police to support the acquittals, he had completely ignored the Tribunal report and not allowed it to be admitted in evidence,” added the petition.
The petitioner’s advocate argued that the judge had completely discarded the testimony of seven eyewitnesses, stating them to be of bad character. This he said was not in accordance with the principles of law.
Sial wanted to continue with further arguments but the court ordered that the issues raised were adequate for admitting the appeal and notices be issued.
After hearing the main appeal, the advocate for Shahid Hayat was asked for his arguments in support of his appeal. Zubaidi said he adopted the arguments of Sial and notices were issued in that appeal as well.
Mir Murtaza Bhutto along with his seven companions was killed in an alleged police encounter near Clifton 70 on September 20, 1996. Then Clifton SHO Haq Nawaz Sial had filed an FIR of the case that same night against the companions of Bhutto. Subsequently, another FIR was registered by Noor Mohammad, an aide of Bhutto against Shoaib Suddle, Wajid Durrani, Shahid Hayat, Rai Tahir, Masood Sharif and others.
After a trial that lasted 14 years, Additional District and Session-East Judge Aftab Ahmed in December 2009 acquitted all the accused in the main case and its counter-case. Appeals against the acquittal were filed by both sides in January 2010.
