PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Wednesday challenged in the Peshawar High Court the acquittal of 26 people in the Mashal Khan murder case.
An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Haripur had announced its verdict in the lynching case on February 7, handing one person two death sentences, five persons multiple terms of life imprisonment and 25 others jail sentences, while acquitting 26 suspects for want of ‘sufficient’ evidence.
KP Advocate General (AG) Latif Yousafzai filed three separate appeals in the court. One of the petitions pleaded the court to set aside the acquittal of the 26 people in the case. The second one pleaded against the acquittal of 31 people, including the prime convict, against certain charges. The third petition prayed the court to increase the sentence of 31 convicts who had been given three years in prison.
The petition argued that the trial court had “committed a grave error and illegality by acquitting” the 26 people despite what it called a plethora of evidence produced against them by the prosecution. The plea further argued that the acquittal was not maintainable in the eyes of the law and was liable to be set aside. Mashal Khan, 23, a student of mass communications at Mardan’s Abdul Wali Khan University, was beaten and shot to death by an angry mob on April 13, 2017, after he was accused of blasphemy. Of the total 61 suspects charged in the first information report, 57 had been arrested within a few days of the incident. The 58th suspect who was arrested last month has yet to be charged.
Published in Daily Times, February 22nd 2018.
