Shahrukh Jatoi’s stay in hospital: CM suspends Karachi jail superintendent

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has suspended Karachi Central Jail Superintendent Hassan Sethu after Shahrukh Jatoi, convicted for the murder of Shahzeb Khan, was found illegally staying at a hospital for 11 months.

The Home department, on Friday, directed Sethu to appear before the authorities.

Jatoi was taken to the hospital after the superintendent wrote a letter to the director of the Qamar-ul-Islam Hospital on May 5, 2021.

The VIP room, where he stayed, on the first floor of the hospital, had a separate sitting area with leather sofas for visitors, a centre table, air conditioner, fridge and a TV on the wall. Moeen, the administrator of the hospital, told media persons that Jatoi stayed at the hospital for seven to eight months.

Jatoi was sent back to jail on Monday after it was found that he was staying in the hospital without the recommendation of a medical board.

Shahrukh Jatoi, Siraj Talpur, and two security guards Murtaza Lashari and Sajjad Talpur were convicted of murdering Shahzeb Khan on December 24, 2012, over a petty argument.

An anti-terrorism court handed them death sentences in the case but a single bench of the Sindh High Court removed the Anti-Terrorism Act clauses from the case and sent it to a trial court.

The trial court then granted them bail in the case. However, the Supreme Court took suo motu notice of the case and ordered the Sindh High Court to reexamine the case after civil society raised the issue. In May 2019, the Sindh High Court commuted the death sentences awarded to Shahrukh Jatoi and Siraj Talpur in the Shahzeb Khan murder case to life imprisonment. The court upheld the life imprisonment of two other suspects in the case.

The four men wanted their death sentences to be overturned. However, the Sindh High Court noted that while Section 302 (Murder) of the PPC is a pardonable offence, and Shahzeb Khan’s family had pardoned the men, the clauses of the Anti-Terrorism Act were not pardonable..