Burying the hatchet: Six suspects acquitted after 26-years in poll rigging case

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On May 31, 1988, the FIR was registered with the Crime Circle I FIA and the charges were framed against the suspects on June 6, 1993. PHOTO: FILE

KARACHI: An anti-corruption court acquitted on Wednesday all six suspects in a 26-year-old poll rigging case. The judge of the special federal anti-corruption court, Mohammad Azeem, acquitted all the suspects after recording the evidence and arguments from both the sides.

The suspects, Malik Sikandar Awan, Major (retd) Pervez Fazal, Nabi Sher, Malik Jan Muhammad, Malik Muhammad Hayat, Major (retd) Willayat Khan, Tariq Altaf and Malik Sahib Khan had been charged with taking away the national identity cards of 150,000 women from the Pakistan Security Printing Corporation before the 1988 elections and used them to rig the polls.

Two suspects, Tariq and Sahib Khan, and an investigating officer, Syed Masood Ali Shah, passed away during the trial while one of the suspects, Malik Sikandar, was paralysed. The judgment revealed that the key suspect, Ghulam Haider, remained an absconding accused throughout the trial.

On May 31, 1988, the FIR was registered with the Crime Circle I FIA and the charges were framed against the suspects on June 6, 1993. The prosecution examined 10 witnesses during the trial. One of the witnesses, Muhammad Yasin, who served at the printing corporation from August 15, 1982, to October 11, 1993, disclosed that the FIA had approached and pressurised him into becoming a prosecution witness. The case became highly doubtful when he submitted that no such incident took place.

As the prosecution never requested the court to declare him a hostile witness, his testimony was accepted. The order revealed that the men were posted on keys post at the printing corporation in the mid 1980s but none of the witnesses said that the stolen articles were recovered from the suspects present in the court.

Interestingly, the prosecutor retired after completing his 25 years in service but the case was still pending. The last witness was examined on June 26, 2009, and the statements of the accused were recorded on October 1, the same year.

In his arguments, defence counsel Shahadat Awan said that the suspects underwent the agony of a protracted trial for years and the prosecution failed to connect them with the alleged offences.
After rehearing the arguments from both sides, judge Azeem had reserved the order till May 7.

Earlier on February 20, the then judge of the court, Ahmed Luqman Memon, had reserved the order till March 10 but he was transferred to a court in Hyderabad and the judgment was deferred for another date.

(By Rizwan Shehzad) Published in GNN & Tribune, May 8th, 2014.