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Criminal Petition for Special Leave to Appeal No. 196 of 1967, decided on 6th October 1967.
(On appeal from the judgment and order of the High Court of West Pakistan, Lahore, dated the 5th June 1967, in Criminal Appeal No. 827 of 1964).
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----Granted where re‑examina tion of evidence was needed to ensure safe dispensation of justice‑Constitution of Pakistan (1962), Art. 58 (3).
Sultan Ahmad, Advocate Supreme Court, instructed by Masood Akhtar, Attorney for Petitioner.
Nemo for the State.
Date of hearing : 6th October 1967.
.‑This is a petition seeking leave to appeal against a conviction for murder which rests on circumstantial evidence alone. There was an approver, whose evidence was rejected by the trial Court, on the ground, inter alia that he was approver also in another case of murder against the same persons (in which, it is said, they have been acquitted). There were recoveries of articles allegedly removed at the time of commission of the murder. This evidence was also rejected, on the grounds of (1) doubt as to whether one article, the most important of the recoveries, was in fact removed, as its loss was not mentioned in the initial report, although it was within the knowledge of the reporter and (2) that the recoveries were from an open place in a house occupied by a number of persons besides the petitioner. There was evidence, given by a tracker, of identification of the footprints of the petitioner as tallying with some found on the roof of the house in which the murder was committed, which was rightly regarded by the trial Court as being of doubtful value. (The position would have been different if moulds had been made of the footprints on the roof). Finally, there was proof of the presence of prints of (1) the left finger, and (2) the left palm impression of the petitioner on objects in the house, and these form the sole basis of the' High Court's finding that the petitioner was guilty. Mr. Sultan Ahmad urges that the procedure followed in preserving these prints and later, sending them to the crime laboratory for examination, etc., was very lax.
We consider that the evidence needs to be re‑examined, to ensure safe dispensation of justice in this case, and accordingly grant leave to appeal as prayed.
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