KARACHI: The Supreme Court (SC) has overturned the life imprisonment handed down to a seminary student in the murder case of his classmate by extending to him the benefit of doubt.
The apex court observed that the prosecution’s case, which rested wholly on circumstantial evidence, was mired in doubt as the motive had not been proved, while there was no proof against the appellant/petitioner for allegedly teasing or quarrelling with the deceased before the incident.
A sessions court had sentenced Fazal Mehmood to death in November 2019 for killing his classmate, Raziullah, at a seminary in the Bahadurabad locality in November 2015.
Thereafter, the convict, through his lawyer, approached the Sindh High Court (SHC) challenging his conviction order, and the SHC had commuted the capital punishment to life imprisonment in April 2021. Subsequently, the appellant challenged the SHC’s verdict in the Supreme Court.
Acquits the appellant on benefit of doubt
A three-judge bench of the SC comprising Justice Athar Minallah, Justice Irfan Saadat Khan and Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmad Khan, in its judgment, noted that the prosecution’s case was bereft of any ocular account and rested wholly on circumstantial material.
Regarding the CCTV material, it said the same did not inspire confidence since no site plan aligned the camera’s field of view with the locus in quo; there was no proof of continuous recording and time-sync or system clocks, nor any demonstration that the footage was free from edits or overlays.
It also observed that there was no forensic report regarding the veracity of the footage and, even on its face, the footage was equivocal as resolution, angles and lighting did not permit positive identification beyond a reasonable doubt.
The apex court further noted that the last-seen together circumstance was equally frail, as the prosecution must have established with clarity the specific point in time when the deceased was last alive in the company of the accused. The common accommodation of the victim at the seminary, with multiple persons having ready access to each other, undermined the value of the last-seen evidence.
In such circumstances, it said, an inference that the petitioner alone could have committed the act would be speculative at best, and this fact remained a neutral circumstance that may arouse suspicion but could not shoulder the evidentiary burden needed for a conviction, especially when it had come on record that room No. 4 of the seminary was shared by some 25 students, including the victim and the accused.
The judgement also noted that the recoveries made from scene of occurrence also raised significant questions, as record revealed that a blood-stained knife was recovered from petitioner’s bed underneath his pillow and the same was sent for chemical examination and returned with a positive result for traces of human blood.
“Interestingly, however, the medical evidence mentions no injuries attributable to the blade, instead only highlighting injuries sustained as a result of a heavy object falling on the deceased’s skull; in our case the cinderblock. This adds another doubt in the plethora contained in the prosecution case,” it added.
The SC further observed that the factum of motive had not been proved and there was no record that the petitioner had allegedly teased or quarrelled with the deceased; in fact, one of the witnesses deposed that the deceased and the accused were close friends.
“The prosecution case is thus mired in doubt and it is axiomatic that the benefit of these doubts must accrue in favour of the accused. The prosecution has not been able to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and the judgments of the trial court and the high court are accordingly set aside by converting this petition into an appeal and allowing the same. The appellant is resultantly acquitted of the charges levelled against him by extending the benefit of doubt,” it concluded.
Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2025.
