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Salahuddin and another V. The State,

PCrLJ 2018 1297 · Balochistan High Court

This case involved an appeal against a murder conviction, alongside a separate petition seeking a harsher sentence.

The incident occurred in November 2014 when the accused, Salah-ud-Din, and others allegedly attacked the complainant's brother at a medical store, resulting in his death from gunshot wounds. The trial court convicted Salah-ud-Din under section 302(b) of the Pakistan Penal Code (murder) and sentenced him to life imprisonment, along with a compensation order. The convict appealed against his conviction, while the complainant filed a separate revision petition asking the court to enhance the sentence to death.

The Balochistan High Court examined several issues. First, it addressed the nine-hour delay in filing the police report, ruling this was not suspicious since the family first had to travel 25 kilometers to bury the body, and there was no evidence of deliberation or fabrication during that time. Second, the court found the eyewitness testimony credible and well corroborated by medical evidence about the injuries and timing, even though one witness was the deceased's brother, since mere family relationship doesn't automatically make testimony unreliable. Finally, on sentencing, the court noted that the complainant's own FIR mentioned prior enmity as the motive, which legally counts as a mitigating factor that rules out the death penalty.

As a result, the court upheld the conviction and dismissed both the appeal and the request for a harsher sentence, keeping the life imprisonment sentence intact.

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