Witness testimony will not be given weight by the Court where it contradicts medical evidence, and where there are doubts as to whether the witnesses had been present at the scene of the alleged crime.
The accused was convicted under PPC 302(b) and 149 and sentenced to death. The Lahore High Court confirmed the death sentence. The complainant alleged that while he was travelling, the accused and four armed co-accused surrounded his vehicle. The deceased was pulled out of the vehicle and attacked by the co-accused, and shot in the right thigh by the accused. The deceased died at the scene. The motive for the attack was said to be previous litigation. All co-accused were acquitted.
The Supreme Court found several failings in the witness testimony. Both eye-witnesses were not residents of the locality where the crime took place and were only there by chance – though they claimed to have been travelling in the vehicle with the deceased, there was no evidence to support that. The medical evidence did not support the witnesses’ visual account regarding number and location of injuries. A gunshot wound on the deceased was blackened, indicating the shot was fired from a distance of 3 feet or less, but the site plan showed that the distance between the assailants and the deceased was 11 feet – meaning that the presence of the eye-witnesses at the spot is doubtful. The court concluded that if they “[h]ad they been present at the spot and had witnessed the occurrence, they could have ascribed the correct role to the accused and explain all the injuries on the person of the deceased”. Thus the accused was acquitted.
Both eye witnesses also admitted that the accused had no direct enmity to commit the offence, and no evidence of previous enmity was falsified by the court. The witnesses also made improvements to their accounts on material points.
Given the evidentiary problems, the Court found that the prosecution had not been able to prove its case beyond the shadow of doubt, allowed the appeal and ruled that the accused be acquitted.
