Sindh High Court Asks For Complete Information

Sindh High court asks for complete information on the custody of the accused acquitted in the Daniel Pearl murder case. Pakistan’s High Court has sought full information from the government on the petition filed on the custody of four acquitted in the kidnapping and murder case of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Daniel Pearl was abducted and murdered in 2002 in Karachi.

The main accused in the case, Omar Sheikh, Fahd Naseem, Salman Saqib and Sheikh Adil, through their lawyers, have asked the reason for their custody in the petition filed in the High Court. While they have been acquitted in the month of April. On Thursday, a bench headed by Justice Muhammad Iqbal Kalhoro directed the jail administration to seek information from the government as well as introduce Sheikh’s parents to him as per the rules.

The petitioners’ counsel in the High Court had said that Omar Sheikh’s parents had come from London to meet her but the jail administration was not introducing them to their son. The lawyer said, his clients have been in jail for the last 18 years. When he is acquitted of the case in April, he is still not being released from prison. This jail detention is illegal. Therefore, all four of their clients should be released without delay.

On April 2, a two-member bench of judges in the Sindh High Court acquitted all the four accused of kidnapping for ransom and subsequent murder charges. Only Omar Sheikh was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. The lawyer said, Sheikh has spent more time in jail, so now there is no reason to keep him there. Whereas earlier in 2002, Omar Sheikh was sentenced to death by the Hyderabad Anti-Terrorism Court in the case.

Later, on appeal to the High Court, he and three other accused were relieved. The provincial government of Sindh and Pearl’s parents have appealed in the Supreme Court against the Sindh High Court order. The Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief Daniel Pearl (38) was kidnapped for ransom, later murdered.