SUKKUR: The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Sukkur has sentenced all six accused in the murder of Jamiat Ulema Islam leader Khalid Mahmood Soomro to life imprisonment.
ATC judge Abdul Rahman Qazi announced the verdict in the case at the Sukkur Central Jail amid high security.
The court also handed down an additional seven years of imprisonment for possession of weapons. The convicts were sentenced to life imprisonment twice and fined over Rs 1 million each.
The convicts, identified as Hanif Bhutto, Sarang Totani, Mushtaq Mehr, Darya Khan Jamali, Altaf Jamali, and Latif Jamali, were accused of killing Soomro on November 29, 2014.
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Khalid Soomro was offering his morning prayers when unidentified gunmen entered the mosque and shot him dead.
Holding over 450 hearings in the Khalid Soomro murder case, the ATC had reserved the verdict on December 13.
The accused have been incarcerated in the Central Jail since December 2014.
WHO WAS KHALID SOOMRO
Maulana Dr. Khalid Mehmood Soomro entered practical politics in 1988 and played an active role in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in 1983, during which he was imprisoned in Sukkur Central Jail for nine months.
He also led protests against a military court set up at the Sir Shahnawaz Library in Larkana, which was trying his spiritual mentor, Maulana Abdul Karim of Bair Sharif near Qambar town, over a fatwa he issued against the then-military ruler, Gen Ziaul Haq.
Dr. Soomro gained prominence when he contested elections against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in NA-207 and later faced PPP’s Faryal Talpur for the same seat.
From 2006 to 2012, he served as a member of the Senate, where he consistently advocated for the rights of Sindh and strongly opposed the division of the province.
The attack on November 29, 2014, was the seventh assassination attempt on Dr. Soomro.