Wali Khan Babar’s brother goes to court over men who ordered the hit
Five men arrested in April 2011 are standing trial, five others on the run.
By Zeeshan Mujahid
KARACHI: The brother of slain journalist Wali Khan Babar has gone back to court, this time to ask for the inclusion of the names of the people who ordered the hit.
Wali Khan Babar, a young emerging journalist, was killed in a targeted attack in the limits of the Super Market police station in Liaquatabad town while returning home in Nazimabad from work on January 13, 2011.
In April last year, the five men, arrested in another case by the Gulshan-e-Iqbal police, confessed to Babar’s murder during a routine interrogation. The detained men are Muhammad Shahrukh Khan alias Mani, Faisal Muhammad alias Nafsiati, Muhammad Shakeel, Syed Tahir Naveed Shah alias Polka and Syed Muhammad Ali Rizvi. They are awaiting trial. The absconding men wanted in the case include Faisal ‘Mota’, Asad, Nasir, Kamran and Saeed ‘Commando’.
On Monday, an anti-terrorism court (ATC III) headed by Judge Ghulam Mustafa Memon allowed an application filed by Babar’s brother Mohabbat Khan to make changes to the charge sheet. It issued notices to the five accused men in custody for February 27 when the new charges would be framed against them.
Wali’s brother maintains that the charge sheet did not have the names of the persons who provoked and instigated the alleged killers to target the young man, and that the charges should mention the details of the instigators or real plotters.
The ATC had earlier heard arguments by Mohabbat Khan Babar’s lawyer Arshad Cheema, who moved the court under section 227 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
His lawyer also pointed out that details about the crime scene, which should have been specifically mentioned in the “memo of inspection”, were missing from the case file. Wali’s brother has thus appealed to the court to inspect the police file, fill in the gaps in the police investigation and after this exercise, amend the charges.
The court allowed the request for an inspection of the police file. The court also ordered that the accused men should be produced at the hearing. The judge heard the counsel for the accused men.
A total 103 journalists were killed in 2011, with Mexico as the most dangerous and Pakistan as fourth dangerous place to work for the media, the Vienna-based press watchdog IPI has said.
Source: The Express Tribune
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