Will Uzair Baloch's 'confessional statement' be enough to convict him?

• Alleged gangster Uzair Baloch reportedly gave a confessional statement in which he confesses to killing people and earning millions in extortion.
• Defence and prosecution lawyers and independent experts, however, are not too hopeful of the confessional statement holding its ground in court. 
• They say that when it comes to convicting someone, courts depend on evidence, be it direct, ocular or circumstantial evidence.

The alleged kingpin of the Lyari gang war, Uzair Baloch, recently made stark allegations, in a "confessional" statement attributed to him, against the PPP leadership and police implicating them as major beneficiaries of his purported criminal enterprise which churned millions of rupees monthly in extortion from Karachi, The News reported Friday. 

The confessional document had landed in an anti-terrorism court (ATC).

It was recorded under section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) in the court of a judicial magistrate at the City Courts in April 2016. 

This is three months after the Rangers announced Uzair’s arrest in a raid in the outskirts of Karachi, contrary to the reports that he had been arrested two years ago in the United Arab Emirates by the Interpol.

Read more: Uzair Baloch — from transporter's son to infamous gang lord to enemy spy

Uzair says in the document that he earned Rs2 million per month through extortion from the Fishermen’s Cooperative Society (FCS), while PPP’s women wing president and sister of former president Asif Ali Zardari, Faryal Talpur, received ‘crores’ (tens of millions) per month.

The FCS is a semi-government organisation overseeing operations at the fish harbour in Karachi, which is the biggest seafood market of Pakistan.

The document quotes Uzair as saying that he maintained ‘friendly’ relations with police officers, including former top cop of Karachi Waseem Ahmed who later served as the director-general of the Federal Investigation Agency, former head of the Special Investigation Unit Farooq Awan who recently served as the campaign manager for PPP candidate Qadir Khan Mandokhail in the NA-249 by-poll, and his brother Shahdat Awan, a senior lawyer who served as the prosecutor-general in Sindh.

"Due to his connections in the PPP with former Sindh home minister Zulfiqar Mirza, MNA Qadir Patel and former senator Yousuf Baloch, all police officers in Lyari were practically appointed by Uzair and the directors of the FCS because he wanted the authorities to look the other way from his criminal enterprise that depended on extortion, drugs sales and gambling," the publication reported as saying, quoting the confessional statement.

Read more: Karachi court acquits Lyari gangster Uzair Baloch in two more murder cases

Uzair said PPP's leadership "used him to encroach upon land and businesses as well as to extort money from traders and other people in exchange for saving him from the clutches of the law."

He also reportedly confesses to killing people in the statement, including law enforcers, elected representatives, businesspersons and rival gang members.

The credibility and maintainability in the court of law of this explosive confessional statement hangs in the balance since Uzair has already retracted from it, saying he never made such a confession and this story "was a bunch of lies".

To counter check this claim, the ATC-XVI has already summoned the judicial magistrate, who recorded this statement, in the court to depose his testimony.

Defence and prosecution lawyers and independent experts are not too hopeful of the confessional statement holding its ground. They told The News that when it comes to convicting someone, courts depend on evidence, be it direct, ocular or circumstantial evidence.

The confessional statement will become null and void, said Advocate Abid Zaman, who is the attorney for Uzair. He said this will happen because the defendant, in his statement, under the Section 342 (power to examine the accused) of the CrPC would deny making it. 

“Such statements are usually taken under duress and therefore have no credibility except for making headlines,” Zaman said.

Special Public Prosecutor Sajid Mehboob, who is part of the Rangers legal team, argued that the confession was always voluntary and took place in the watch of a judicial officer who would in this case testify in the court about its authenticity. 

There were precedents in which accused were convicted on the basis of their confessional statements, he said.

The court will accept the confession only if the prosecution can bring some circumstantial evidence to support their case, said Mohammad Khan Buriro, a lawyer and former ATC judge. 

“Otherwise, it will go to the bin,” he said, adding that even the magistrate who presided over this confession would appear in court as a prosecution witness.

Senior journalist Ishaq Tanoli, who has covered the judicial system, said that in most cases of confessions, the accused deviate from their purported statements and after that, the prosecution has nothing but evidence to prove their cases.