MPA Jam Owais, four others acquitted in Nazim Jokhio murder case.

KARACHI -- Pakistan Peoples Party MPA Jam Owais and his four servants were acquitted in a case pertaining to the murder of activist Nazim Jokhio after Malir's District and Sessions' Court on Thursday accepted the out-of-court settlement between the accused and the victim's legal heirs.

Jam Owais and his four servants - Muhammad Mairaj, Ahmed Khan Shoro, Muhammad Doda Khan and Muhammad Soomar - were facing the charges of torturing 26-year-old Jokhio to death at the lawmaker's farmhouse in Malir on Nov 2, 2021.

On Thursday, Additional District and Sessions Judge Faraz Ahmed Chandio pronounced his verdict on the applications filed by the undertrial lawmaker along with the co-accused and legal heirs of the victim, under Sections 345(2) and 345(6) of the Criminal Procedure Code, pleading to accept their out-of-court settlement in the murder and kidnapping case.

Accepting the applications, the judge acquitted detained MPA Jam Owais, Mairaj, Ahmed Shoro, Doda Khan and Muhammad Soomar of the charges of committing premeditated murder of Nazimuddin Jokhio, throwing his cell phone and clothes in a well to conceal the evidence in furtherance of their common intention.

The judge ruled that the offence under the Section 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code was compoundable.

'MPA Jam Owais has been released from the Malir district prison following his acquittal and subsequent order issued by the court directing the prison superintendent to release him forthwith, if his custody was not required in any other case,' defence counsel Wazeer Hussain Khoso confirmed to the Dawn.

However, the judge ruled that two of them - Doda Khan and Soomar Salar - who had also been charged with kidnapping the victim before his gruesome murder, would face the trial under Section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code, as this was a non-compoundable offence.

Judicial staffers said that Advocate Mazhar Junejo, who claimed to be an eyewitness of the incident and had pleaded the court to allow him to join the trial, was absent from the court.

On Dec 10, the court had indicted MPA Owais along with...