PESHAWAR: A Lahore High Court (LHC) Multan bench on Monday acquitted the prime accused in the murder of model Qandil Baloch of life imprisonment after the mutual agreement of parties and deviation of witnesses from their early statements.
Advocate Sardar Mehboob appeared before the bench on behalf of accused Muhammad Waseem. Qandil Baloch, known for her outspokenness on social media, was strangled to death in July 2016 at her home. The Multan model court on September 27, 2019, had sentenced Waseem, the main accused and brother of the victim, to life imprisonment.
Safdar Abbas Shah was appointed as Qandil’s lawyer while Advocate Mehboob defended the prime accused in the case. The court has issued the order after a letter of consent on behalf Qandil’s parents was presented, saying that they will have no objection if the prime accused is acquitted in the case. Earlier, the court had rejected her parents pardon request.
The Multan Model Court had declared Muhammad Arif a fugitive in the case in 2019, while Qandil’s brother Aslam Shaheen and five others, including Mufti Abdul Qavi, a religious scholar and former member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Ulema wing, were acquitted. The judgment had said that Waseem was sentenced to life imprisonment under section 311 but the prosecution had failed to prove the charges against the other accused.
Waseem had confessed after his arrest that he had committed the crime, saying that “Qandil was causing disgrace to his family” but later when he was formally charged, he deviated from confession.
The accused in the case also included Aslam Shaheen, as well as his close relatives Haq Nawaz, Zafar Iqbal, Muhammad Arif, Mufti Abdul Qawi and Abdul Basit. Wasim and Haq Nawaz were the main accused in the case while Abdul Basit was a taxi driver and was accused of helping the accused to escape after the murder of Qandil Baloch.
The case was transferred from the District and Sessions Judge’s Court of Multan to Model Court so that the case could be decided as soon as possible. The court maintained that in cases of honor killings, request for pardon by the plaintiff could not be accepted.