Due to weak prosecution and poor police performance, cases of acquittal of prisoners on death row are on the rise in Punjab, making the slain persons’ families worried, it was reported on Monday.
Only recently, the Lahore High Court (LHC) acquitted two persons, who had been handed down life and death sentences for murder, due to ‘lack of proof’.
Ikram Hussain alias Billa, who had been awarded the death penalty, and Imran alias Goonga, who had been awarded life sentence, were released from prisons just seven years after their arrests.
Both of them had been arrested in connection with the murder of Nazim Ali in 2015.
Railway police station, Lahore had registered a murder case against them on September 12, 2015. A sessions court had awarded death sentence to Ikram while life behind bars to Imran.
But a two-member bench of the LHC, consisting of Justice Shehram Sarwar Chaudhry and Justice Sadaqat Ali, ordered the acquittal of both these prisoners because of the absence of eyewitnesses at the crime scene.
