SUKKUR: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Sukkur sentenced six accused to life imprisonment in connection with the murder case of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) leader Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro.
Judge Abdul Rehman Qazi announced the reserved short verdict on Friday at Sukkur Central Jail, where the special court convened. The court took testimony from 17 witnesses during more than 450 hearings of the high-profile case.
The convicts, who have been in custody since December 2014, were handed seven-year terms along with life imprisonment for weapons charges and fined more than Rs1 million each.
Hanif Bhutto, Sarang Totani, Mushtaq Mehr, Darya Khan Jamali, Altaf Jamali, and Latif Jamali, were accused of killing former senator Soomro on November 29, 2014.
Family members of the victim including his son Rashid Mehmood Soomro, who is currently serving as Secretary General of JUI-F Sindh, and local party leaders, were present in court during the verdict.
Addressing the media, Rashid Soomro said the convicts should have been given the death penalty. “We will now knock on the high court’s doors,” he vowed.
Doctor Soomro, who was the secretary general of the party at that time, was offering his morning prayers when unidentified gunmen entered the mosque and shot him dead.
The former senator was gunned down by unidentified men on November 29, 2014, when he was in a mosque early in the morning in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area of Sukkur.
