MUHAMMAD SADIQ AND OTHERS vs THE STATE

ORDER

' KARAM ELAHEE CHAUHAN, J.-The petitioners alongwith four others are involved in a case registered as per F. I. R. No, 170 at Police Station, Gambat, District Khairpur on 14-7-1978 for the murder of Nasim Kharal, Advocate. They applied for bail but their application was rejected by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Khairpur on 1-11-1978.

2. The petitioners then filed Criminal Bail Application No, 2 of 1979 but without any success as the same was dismissed by a learned Single Judge of the Sind High Court at Karachi on 7-4-1979.

3. The petitioners have come up in a petition for special leave to appeal against the same to this Court.

4. It is argued by the learned counsel for the petitioners that the names of his clients are not mentioned in the F. I. R. And therefore, they should have been released on bail by the Courts below.

As against this the learned Advocate-General, Sind, has argued that the charge against the petitioners is that they were involved in an offence under section 120-B of the P. P. C., namely for conspiracy to murder Nasini Kharal, Advocate. The involvement of the present petitioners he submits came to light during the course of investigation and therefore the mere omissions of their names in the F. I. R. Is not material. In this respect he referred to confessional statement of Saleh son of Bachal Narejo (petitioner No, 5) as also the confessional statements of certain other accused, namely (1) Rab Rakhio son of Bhai Khan, (2) Saleh son of Bachal Narejo and (3) Attu alias Atta Muhammad son of Gulab Narajo. Similarly he referred to statement of Pir Bux son of Illahi Bux.

5. In our opinion it is not necessary to go into these aspects of the matter at this stage because it was pointed out by the learned Advocate-General that the case is now fixed for trial for a date in this month. He further submitted that actually the case had also been fixed on some earlier dates for which the witnesses had duly been bound down but the accused got it adjourned on one pretext or another namely that they desired to engage a senior counsel or to file an application for transfer of the case etc. But that Obit of the petitioners has also failed because their transfer application has been dismissed and now the case is to come up for trial as mentioned earlier in this month. In that view of the matter we think that when the trial is to commence shortly and a date has already been fixed by the Court, it is not fair to go into the merits of the case in the form of a bail application at this juncture, and the case is therefore not fit for grant of special leave to appeal.

6. The result is that this petition is dismissed.