An anti-terrorism court had awarded death penalty on 21 counts to the convicts including Karamat, Abdul Hafeez, Afzal and Zulfiqar. The convicts had challenged their sentence before the high court.
Representing the appellants, Usman Naseem argued that the trial court had awarded the punishment despite the fact that prosecution failed to produce any direct and cogent evidence against them. He pointed out that the police had arrested them from Minar-i-Pakistan in a false case of possessing explosive material and had not disclosed their arrest till then chief justice of Pakistan took suo motu notice on applications by families of missing persons. He said joint identification parade of the appellants was held by the police while the law of evidence did not allow this practice. He said the injured persons also failed to identify the appellants and the finger prints of the appellants were not matched with the samples taken from the crime scene.
The bench headed by Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan expressed serious displeasure over the prosecution for carrying out a faulty investigation. He observed that a joint investigation team had conducted the investigation of the occurrence but the fundamental flaws suggested that it was held by a sub-inspector. Justice Qasim Khan lamented that courts faced criticism when convicts were acquitted due to incompetence and faulty investigation by the prosecution.