PESHAWAR: A child protection court has sentenced a man to death after convicting him of kidnapping and killing a minor boy here over two years ago.
Additional sessions judge Mohammad Hanif pronounced that the prosecution had established the “guilt of the accused, Waqas, beyond shadow of reasonable doubt and that the evidence on record connected him with the commission of the offence.”
He also sentenced the convict to 14-year rigorous imprisonment under Section 364-A of Pakistan Penal Code for kidnapping the child.
The court also ordered that the convict should pay compensation to the tune of Rs1 million to the legal heirs of the deceased.
He was also awarded 14-year rigorous imprisonment for kidnapping child
The complainant in the case was the mother of the deceased child, whose complaint about the disappearance of her son was initially registered in the daily diary by the officials of the concerned Pandu police station on June 28, 2022.
An FIR was registered on July 1, 2022, quoting the complainant as saying her son went to a nearby shop to purchase cigarettes for a relative but didn’t return.
A few days later, she informed the police about receiving a call on her cell phone in which the caller allegedly told her that her son would return back in 20 days.
The investigation team finally traced that the phone number from which the call was made was in use of the accused (now convict) Waqas.
The accused was arrested on March 13, 2023, after which he had confessed his guilt and had also recorded his confessional statement before a magistrate.
About the motive of the crime, the accused had informed that he was a former lover of the complainant and was asking her to meet him.
He had insisted that on the day of the incident, he was present outside the house of the complainant and had spotted the child and had lured him on the pretext of purchasing snacks for him.
The accused claimed that while he was taking the boy away in his rickshaw he tried to escape and when he was overpowering him he got strangulated and died. He claimed that he then stuffed the body in a sack and threw it in the Chamkani Canal.
Later on, during further investigation it surfaced that the body of a minor boy was recovered from a water course by personnel of Pabbi police station in Nowshera district in July 2022 and was buried there. The complainant had recognized the shirt, which was worn by the deceased.
During trial, the defence counsel contended that the confessional statement of the accused recorded by the judicial magistrate was not voluntary and suffered material irregularities which were fatal to the prosecution’s case.
The counsel further contended that the identification of the body was doubtful as the same was completely decomposed. He argued that the cause of death was also not determined by the doctor.
The lawyer said that the incident was an unseen one and no one had seen the accused in the company of the deceased.
The state prosecutor and complainant’s counsel argued that the accused had a revengeful motive to commit the offence being ex-paramour of the complainant and when she refused to satisfy his lust, the accused abducted the child and killed him in revenge.
They argued that the confessional statement of the accused could solely be based on the conviction as the same was voluntary and without any pressure or coercion.
Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2025
