ORDER   SHEET

IN  THE  HIGH  COURT  OF  SINDH, CIRCUIT  COURT,  LARKANA

Crl. Acquittal Appeal No.D-26 of 2021.

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DATE                                       ORDER WITH SIGNATURE OF HON’BLE JUDGE

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Before:

Mr. Justice Irshad Ali Shah,

 Mr. Justice Shamsuddin Abbasi,

01. For orders on M.A.No.7430/2021 (U/A).

02. For orders on office objection “A”.

03. For orders on M.A.No.7382/2021 (E/A).

04. For hearing of main case.

23.11.2021

                        Mr. Habibullah Ghouri, Advocate for appellant/complainant.  

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1.                     Urgency granted.

2 to 4.             The facts in brief necessary for disposal of instant criminal acquittal appeal are that the private respondents allegedly together with rest of the culprits, after having formed an unlawful assembly and in prosecution of their common object, committed murder of Mumtaz Ali by causing him fire shot injuries, for that the present case was registered and after due trial, they were acquitted by learned 1^st Additional Sessions Judge/MCTC, Qamber, vide judgment dated 12.06.2021, which is impugned by the appellant/complainant before this Court by preferring the instant criminal acquittal appeal.

                        It is contended by learned counsel for the appellant/complainant that the learned trial Court has acquitted the private respondents on the basis of mis-appraisal of evidence, which requires to be re-appraised by this Court.   By stating so, he sought for issuance of notices against the private respondents and the State.

                        We have considered the above arguments and perused the record.

                        The FIR of the incident has been lodged with delay of about one day yet it does not contain the names and description of the private respondents, those were disclosed by the appellant/complainant subsequently by way of further statement. Further statement of the appellant/complainant,    if any, could hardly be treated as part of FIR. In these circumstances, learned trial Court was right to record acquittal of private respondents by making the following observation;

“It is therefore evident that complainant in his FIR nominated only two accused namely Hajan and Muhammad Punhal without disclosing face features of three unknown accused but after inordinate delay of 18 days he through his further statement nominated all the present accused and his eye witnesses also disclosed their names in their statements recorded after delay of 18 days in terms of section 161 Cr.PC, which means that names and even face features of all present accused are not mentioned in FIR. As such, prosecution evidence and identification of the accused in this Court under the attending circumstances is highly doubtful, faulty and insufficient to prove the alleged guilt against the present accused so prosecution miserably failed to prove truth of charge against the present accused entitling them to acquittal as per law because quality of evidence decides fate of a criminal trial and impeachable evidence of high quality is needed to base conviction in a murder case which leaves no legal choice for this Court except to acquit the present accused of the charge”.    

                        In case of State and others vs. Abdul Khaliq and others (PLD 2011 SC-554), it has been observed by the Hon’ble Apex Court that;

“The scope of interference in appeal against acquittal is most narrow and limited, because in an acquittal the presumption  of innocence is significantly added to the cardinal rule of criminal jurisprudence, that an accused shall be presumed to be innocent until proved guilty; in other words, the presumption of innocence is doubled. The courts shall be very slow in interfering with such an acquittal judgment, unless it is shown to be perverse, passed in gross violation of law, suffering from the errors of grave misreading or non-reading of the evidence; such judgments should not be lightly interfered and heavy burden lies on the prosecution to rebut the presumption of innocence which the accused has earned and attained on account of his acquittal. Interference in a judgment of acquittal is rare and the prosecution must show that there are glaring errors of law and fact committed by the Court in arriving at the decision, which would result into grave miscarriage of justice; the acquittal judgment is perfunctory or wholly artificial or a shocking conclusion has been drawn. Judgment of acquittal should not be interjected until the findings are perverse, arbitrary, foolish, artificial, speculative and ridiculous. The Court of appeal should not interfere simply for the reason that on the reappraisal of the evidence a different conclusion could possibly be arrived at, the factual conclusions should not be upset, except when palpably perverse, suffering from serious and material factual infirmities”.

                        In view of the facts and reasons discussed above, instant criminal acquittal appeal fails and it is dismissed in limine.

JUDGE

            JUDGE