Salman Ahmad Suleman Vs The State etc.

Stereo. H C J D A 38

JUDGMENT SHEET

IN THE LAHORE HIGH COURT, LAHORE.

(JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT)

Criminal Appeal No. 59286 of 2024 Salman Ahmad Suleman Versus The State & another.

JUDGMENT

DATE OF HEARING: 30.10.2026.

APPELLANT BY: M/s. Kamran Khan Niazi & Barrister Muhammad Sohail Anjum, Advocates.

STATE BY: Mr. Waqas Anwar, Deputy Prosecutor General.

COMPLAINANT BY: Complainant in person.

MUHAMMAD AMJAD RAFIQ, J:- Salman Ahmad Suleman, the accused/appellant was tried in case FIR bearing No.498 dated 18.02.2023 registered under sections 302/324/186/353/337F(ii) of the Pakistan Penal Code 1860 (“PPC”) at Police Station Misri Shah, Lahore by learned Additional Sessions Judge, Lahore and on conclusion of trial, vide impugned judgment dated 29.08.2024, was convicted and sentenced as under: “under section 302(b) PPC to imprisonment for life as Ta’zir with compensation of Rs.5,00,000/- u/s 544-A of Cr.P.C to the legal heirs of the deceased; under section 324 PPC to rigorous imprisonment for five years for causing injury to Shakeel Ahmad/C with fine of Rs.50,000/- ;under section 337-F (ii) PPC to pay Daman amounting to Rs.25,000/- to the victim Shakeel Ahmad/C; under section 353 PPC to simple imprisonment for one year & under section 186 PPC to simple imprisonment for one year.” All the sentences were ordered to run concurrently and benefit of section 382B of Cr.P.C. was extended to the convict/appellant.

02.Being aggrieved by his above conviction and sentence, the appellant has filed instant criminal appeal.

03.As per prosecution case, on 18.02.2023 at about 11:30 AM, complainant Rohail Asghar (PW-10) and his brother Nabeel Asghar (since deceased) had gone to a grocery shop to buy provisions.

There, an altercation broke out between Nabeel Asghar and an unknown man. When Haider Ali and Ali Butt stepped in to pacify them, the man drew a dagger and plunged it into Nabeel Asghar’s chest, striking him in the region of the heart and leaving him soaked in blood. He then turned on the peacemakers, wounding Haider Ali on his left ear and the left side of his head, and Ali Butt on his left arm. As he tried to escape, a police party moved in to intercept him, and he struck Constable Shakeel on the back of his right shoulder with the same dagger. Finally, he turned the blade upon himself and inflicted injuries on his own person before he was overpowered and taken into custody by the police. Nabeel Asghar was being rushed to Ganga Ram Hospital, but he succumbed to his injury on the way.

04.Upon registration of the FIR, the police conducted investigation and submitted a report under Section 173, Cr.P.C. before the learned trial Court, whereafter the accused was charged with the offences alleged against him. He denied the allegations, pleaded innocence, and claimed trial. In support of its case, the prosecution examined sixteen (16) witnesses. Upon conclusion of the prosecution evidence, the accused was examined under Section 342, Cr.P.C., wherein he reiterated his plea of innocence and false implication. He neither opted to appear as his own witness under Section 340(2), Cr.P.C., nor produced any evidence in his defence. Ultimately, the learned trial Court convicted and sentenced him in the manner already detailed hereinabove.

05.Heard. Record perused.

06.The curtain rose on a nightmare: a vicious altercation in broad daylight where the appellant plunged a knife straight into Nabeel Asghar’s chest, piercing his heart. When Haider Ali and Ali Butt bravely intervened, the assailant turned on them, inflicting injuries of his own before fleeing into the chaos.

Chased by a mob of onlookers, the fleeing suspect was finally intercepted by nearby Constable Shakeel Ahmad (PW-09). Unfazed by the danger, the officer was met with a knife strike from the

appellant, who, in a bizarre twist, also began inflicting wounds upon himself. Yet, despite the dramatic apprehension at the scene and his handoff to Pervaiz Ahmad SI (PW-5), what should have been an open-and-shut case for the prosecution was instead systematically dismantled by staggering negligence.

The state’s case unraveled from every direction: two injured witnesses were mishandled, both did not undergo medical examination; one tragically passed away naturally later, and the other discarded by the prosecution as "unnecessary" despite being a vital eyewitness. Meanwhile, Constable Shakeel (PW-9) sustained a muscle-deep shoulder wound yet inexplicably waited twelve agonizing days to seek medical attention, even though the examining physician estimated the injury duration at fifteen days. Contrast that glaring delay with the prompt examination of the accused at 2:43 AM, on February 19, 2023, where doctors uncovered three lacerated wounds that bore no relation to knife attacks, explicitly flagging them as clear signs of fabricated self- harm. Most damning of all, Constable Shakeel never even witnessed the fatal stabbing. Stripped of independent corroboration, the prosecution was left standing on shifting sands, forced to lean entirely on the fragile and heavily scrutinized testimony of the complainant, Rohail Asghar (PW-10).

07.The complainant took the stand with a convenient narrative: while inside a grocery store to buy provisions, he heard a commotion involving his brother, Nabeel Asghar. Rushing outside, he allegedly witnessed the accused strike Nabeel in the chest with a knife, subsequently injure Haider Ali and Ali Butt, and flee into the chaos, only to be chased and apprehended by police. An ambulance was called, but Nabeel tragically expired on the way to Ganga Ram Hospital, where the injured witnesses were supposedly examined. To top it off, the complainant admitted he only learned the appellant's name, Salman Ahmad, afterward through the police. This version reveals a fatal flaw: at the moment of the incident, neither the complainant, the witnesses, nor the police actually knew the

identity of the assailant. Yet, despite the presence of law enforcement right at the scene, the First Information Report (FIR) was subjected to an inexplicable three-hour delay lodged at 2:25 PM for an occurrence that happened at 11:30 AM on February 18, 2023. From there, the procedural collapse snowballed into absurdity: • The Post-Mortem Vacuum: The post-mortem examination was delayed by a staggering fourteen hours, finally taking place at 1:15 AM on February 19, 2023.

• The Accused’s Delayed Evaluation: Even the appellant, supposedly apprehended red-handed at the spot after injuring a police official, was not medically examined until 2:43 AM, after the post-mortem concluded.

This gross, inexplicable delay completely warped the complexion of the case. When witnesses were present, police officers were on site, the dead body was available, and an attacker was caught red- handed at the scene, what on earth restricted the authorities from registering the FIR in due time and executing prompt legal processes? The inescapable conclusion is damning: either the alleged eyewitnesses were never truly present, or the entire occurrence was orchestrated and manipulated outside the official narrative.

08.During cross-examination, the mask slipped. The complainant (PW-10) was confronted with fatal contradictions that completely dismantled the value of his testimony. Stripped of his eyewitness status, he was forced to concede the truth: he had been safely tucked away inside the grocery store, and only rushed outside after hearing a commotion to find his brother already collapsed on the ground. By his own admission, he never saw the stabbing; he merely heard from neighborhood bystanders (mohalladars) that the fleeing suspect had allegedly injured Constable Shakeel. He could not even name the owner of the grocery store he claimed to have entered. He admitted that police officers first met him at the hospital around 1:00 or 1:15 PM, and that neither he nor the other prosecution witnesses ever revisited the scene with the police after the post-mortem examination. Even more damning, he claimed the

police recorded the statements of Haider Ali and Ali Butt right there in the hospital, long before any FIR had even been registered, while admitting that their medical examinations never took place in his presence. To cap it all off, he delivered the fatal blow to his own reliability: he never joined the investigation at all. This staggering display of detachment and disinterest exposes the complainant for what he truly was: not an eyewitness to a murder, nor a witness to an officer being attacked, but merely a bereaved brother who arrived at the hospital after learning of his sibling's death. The police had no interest in involving him in a genuine investigation, using him solely as a puppet complainant to fabricate a cover story and sanitize an incident that unfolded in mysterious circumstances on February 18, 2023. Most glaringly of all: even though a police official was actively wounded during the chaos, law enforcement couldn't even be bothered to spearhead or steer the FIR themselves.

09.The medical evidence regarding Constable Shakeel Ahmad (PW-09) delivered a catastrophic blow to the state's narrative. The alleged knife injury on his person could never be established as weapon-inflicted, primarily because his twelve-day delayed medico-legal examination revealed merely a stitched wound whose duration completely contradicted the date and time of the occurrence. While Shakeel attempted to claim he was present at the scene and attacked by the accused, his own testimony unraveled under scrutiny: he admitted he only officially joined the investigation on March 2, 2023, nearly two weeks later. Though he claimed in his examination-in-chief that the appellant struck him with a dagger on the back of his shoulder, he conspicuously failed to mention any self-inflicted injuries by the accused. When pushed in cross-examination, Shakeel dropped a bombshell: he conceded that after apprehending the suspect, he handed his custody over to SI Pervaiz, and at that precise moment, the accused was entirely uninjured. This was corroborated by SI Pervaiz Ahmad (PW-5)

himself, who confirmed the apprehension but made no mention of any injuries on the appellant. Furthermore, while the police claimed a mob of 20 to 25 people chased the suspect, not a single statement from these alleged chasers exists on the record, nor did any of them ever step into the witness box. Compounding this investigative bankruptcy, the police failed to collect any CCTV footage, despite the incident occurring in broad daylight right outside a bustling grocery shop.

From start to finish, the prosecution’s case is a tangled web of contradictions, omissions, and fabricated timeline gaps. By failing to substantiate critical injuries, producing ghost witnesses, and ignoring vital electronic evidence, the state utterly failed to fix criminal liability with any degree of clarity. The prosecution has completely failed to establish the participation of the accused/appellant in the occurrence.

10.Neither the complainant nor the key witnesses had any prior acquaintance with the accused. By the complainant's own admission, he merely encountered the police at the hospital and entirely withdrew from the investigation following the postmortem examination. Under these critical circumstances, holding an identification parade before a Magistrate with the active participation of both the complainant and the witnesses was not merely a procedural formality; it was an absolute legal imperative. This requirement became all the more indispensable given that neither the First Information Report nor the statements of the prosecution witnesses provided any physical description or distinguishing features of the accused. Furthermore, the apprehension of the accused at the scene was neither witnessed nor corroborated by any civilian witness or the complainant. The sole exception relied upon was Shakeel Ahmad, a constable and PW-9, whose testimony miserably failed to establish his lawful or credible presence at the spot at the time of the incident.

11.As regards the medical evidence, although Dr. Noreen Kashif (PW-13), who conducted the post-mortem examination of

deceased Nabeel Asghar, observed an oval-shaped incised wound on his chest with gaping and clean-cut margins, which apparently lent corroboration to the ocular account, yet, in view of the reasons discussed hereinabove, its further discussion would serve no useful purpose for the prosecution.

12.Although the prosecution claimed recovery of a dagger at the instance of the accused/appellant from the place of occurrence on the very day of occurrence, and its subsequent submission to the PFSA on 22.02.2023 through Atif Riaz, SI/I.O. (PW-16), where human blood was detected on the weapon, yet no blood grouping or DNA analysis was conducted to connect the weapon either with the deceased or the appellant. Thus, in the absence of such forensic corroboration, the recovery remains inconclusive. Moreover, since the ocular account has already been discarded, the said recovery, being merely corroborative in nature, cannot independently sustain the prosecution case and is of no avail to the prosecution.

13.The State prosecutor also delivered a devastating blow to the case by giving up a crucial surviving injured witness, Haider Ali, through a statement dated August 22, 2024. In a profound abdication of statutory duty, the prosecutor abandoned the witness simply on the instructions of the complainant's private counsel, remaining entirely oblivious to the foundational principles of criminal procedure. As mandated by Section 265A of Cr.P.C., a prosecution instituted upon a police report must be conducted exclusively by the Public Prosecutor. A privately engaged counsel is strictly limited to assisting the prosecutor under Sections 493 of Cr.P.C., yet the prosecutor inverted these roles, allowing a private lawyer to dictate the fate of vital testimony and undermining the pursuit of justice.

For reference relevant provisions of law are reproduced; 265A. Trial before Court of Session to be conducted by Public Prosecutor. In every trial before a Court of Session, initiated upon a police report, the prosecution shall be conducted by the Public Prosecutor.

493.Public Prosecutor may plead in all Courts in cases under his charge Pleaders privately instructed to be under his direction. The Public Prosecutor may appear and plead without any written authority before any Court in which any case of which he has charge is under inquiry, trial or appeal, and if any private person instructs a pleader to prosecute in any Court any person in any such case, the Public Prosecutor shall conduct the prosecution, and the pleader so instructed shall act therein, under his directions.

Allowing a private counsel to usurp the conduct of a prosecution is a flagrant subversion of statutory mandates. To deflect from the clear command of the law is a derelict betrayal of duty, an egregious failure through which a public prosecutor sabotages the entire pursuit of justice and sacrifices the fate of the parties they were sworn to protect.

14.In a similar situation, when an application was filed by the complainant to give up a particular witness and the application was dismissed by the learned trial Court holding that it is the prerogative of Prosecutor concerned, this Court in a judgment reported as “GULZAR HOSSAIN versus ADDITIONAL SESSIONS JUDGE, JHANG and 4 others” (2004 P Cr. L J 1353), has upheld the decision of learned trial Court.

15.The Prosecutor General of Punjab must urgently address this alarming state of affairs, which poses a direct threat to the independence, fairness, and efficiency of the prosecution service. It is imperative that the Prosecutor General issues comprehensive general guidelines across the province to ensure strict compliance with statutory mandates, while actively coordinating with key stakeholders to guarantee the unhindered, autonomous functioning of prosecutors in the districts. Furthermore, decisive accountability measures must be taken: the Prosecutor General is called upon to initiate strict disciplinary action against both the delinquent prosecutor and the District Public Prosecutor for their gross omissions and dereliction of duty, which actively sabotaged and devastated the prosecution's case. Office shall transmit copy of this judgment to the Prosecutor General Punjab.

16.It is a settled principle of law that conviction must rest upon trustworthy and confidence-inspiring evidence, and every reasonable doubt must enure to the benefit of the accused, as the burden to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt squarely rests upon the prosecution. It is equally well-settled that it is better to let off one hundred guilty persons than to punish a single innocent person. In the attending circumstances, the prosecution has failed to discharge its burden, entitling the accused/appellant to the benefit of doubt, not as a matter of grace, but as a matter of right. Reliance is placed on the cases reported as “RASHEED AHMAD alias Seeda Versus The STATE” (2026 SCMR 798), “MUHAMMAD SIDDIQUE and another Versus The STATE and others” (2026 SCMR 783), “LAIQ SHAH Versus The STATE” (2026 SCMR 257), “MUSHTAQ AHMED Versus The STATE” (2026 SCMR 60), “MAQSOOD ALAM and another Versus The STATE and others”.

17.For what has been discussed hereinabove, this Court has no hesitation in holding that the prosecution has miserably failed to bring on record any iota of evidence connecting the appellant with the commission of the offence, whereas it was incumbent upon the prosecution to establish his guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. Consequently, the instant Criminal Appeal filed by Salman Ahmad Suleman, accused/appellant, is allowed, and the convictions and sentences recorded by the learned trial Court are set aside. He is acquitted of the charge and shall be released forthwith, if not required to be detained in any other case. The case property, if any, shall be dealt with in accordance with law. The record of the learned trial Court be sent back forthwith.

(Muhammad Amjad Rafiq) Judge

Approved for reporting:

Judge Signed on 30.10.2026 M. Azhar*