ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Monday observed with regret that the atrocious act of parricide constitutes a profound violation of the moral and social fabric and, if left unchecked, has the potential to destroy the foundational stability of family life across society.
‘The cold-blooded murder of his own defenceless parents, who raised him, in such a callous manner within the secure premises of their own house, is an aggravating circumstance that warrants a severe penalty,’ lamented Justice MuhammadHashim Khan Kakar.
The observation came while dismissing the jail petition of Taimoor Sattar, who was convicted of brutally murdering his parents with a hammer in 2010, and upholding his life imprisonment sentences.
Justice Kakar, who headed a three-judge SC bench comprising Justice Salahuddin Panhwar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, however ordered that the life sentences on two counts would run consecutively.
Taimoor Sattar was tried by a trial court, which sentenced him to death on two counts and directed him to pay compensation of Rs50,000 to the legal heirs for the murders of his father, Abdul Sattar, and mother, Shamim Sattar.
Dissatisfied with the verdict, the petitioner filed an appeal before the Lahore High Court (LHC), which on Oct 7, 2015, commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment on each count while extending thebenefit of Section 382-B of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
On Feb 10, 2010, within the precincts of the family residence, the petitioner allegedly bludgeoned his father to death with a hammer. The motive attributed to the crime was his resentment over his father’s refusal to transfer property in his name.
The grim facts of the prosecution case, Justice Kakar observed, involved a rare and distressing instance of both patricide and matricide.
The prosecution case rested on an extrajudicial confession, medical evidence, recoveries, forensic evidence and the inculpatory statement made by the petitioner under Section 342 of the CrPC.
The crime was reported promptly, the judgement noted, adding that the parties were already known to one another and, therefore, there was no possibility of manipulation or misidentification.The record showed that complainant Zafar Iqbal stated in his examination-inchief that the petitioner made an extrajudicial confession before him on two occasions, first over the telephone and later in the presence of another witness, Muhammad Rafique Sajid, while fleeing the scene in a car.
‘No previous enmity or adverse interest on the part of these witnesses has been brought on record to impeach their credibility,’ the judgement observed.
The testimony of both witnesses appeared reliable and confidence-inspiring, as their accounts of the material facts remained consistent and unshaken despite rigorous cross-examination, the judgement recalled.
The mode and manner of the offence, as narrated by the witnesses, found significant corroboration in the medical evidence.
The crush injuries to the skulls of bothdeceased persons indicated that the injuries were inflicted with a blunt object, perfectly aligning with the nature of the weapon re covered.
The recovery of the weapon of offence (a hammer) and the petitioner’s blood-stained clothes from his bedroom at his own pointing-out further substantiated the prosecution case.
The forensic evidence established that the blood-stained earth, the hammer and the petitioner’s blood-stained clothes all contained human blood.
On the question of sentence, the SC observed that the petitioner had failed to demonstrate any mitigating circumstance that could justify a lenient view.
Concluding the judgement, the SC held that no legitimate ground existed to interfere with the well-reasoned LHC verdict, which suffered from neither misreading nor non-reading of evidence.