Cracker attack on Rangers’ picket: SHC allows pleas of three convicted, orders their release

Sindh High Court on Friday allowed appeals of three suspects who were convicted and awarded imprisonment sentence by an anti-terrorism court for throwing cracker on a Rangers’ picket in Korangi in March 2016.

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A two-member bench headed by Justice Muhammad Karim Khan Agha set aside cumulative 28-year imprisonment sentence for each of appellants – Syed Ahmed Hussain and Ubaidullah and 18-year imprisonment sentence for appellant Muhammad Kamran and ordered their release if they were not required in any other case.

All the appellants were found guilty of throwing a cracker on Rangers’ picket at Korangi Crossing and injuring three rangers’ personnel by the Anti-Terrorism Court-XIII on April 25, 2019.

In a 10-page judgment authored by Justice Agha the bench held that there were several technical defects in the identification of the appellants by the sole eye witness, a rangers’ personnel.

“What goes against the eye witness being correctly able to identify the appellants keeping in view that he only identified two of the appellants, did not give any description of the appellants’ appearance in his 161 CrPC statement … and his sketches of appellants were inexplicable,” the bench held.

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It further held: “It is difficult to believe keeping in view… the facts unfolding on the ground at the crime scene i.e a chaotic situation where a blast had just occurred in his picket, injured men were calling for help with dust and smoke everywhere that he (the eye witness) would have been able to hang onto his fleeting recollection of the appellants.”