A Sindh High Court judge on Wednesday cleared PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari of involvement in the 1996 murder of Murtaza Bhutto. Murtaza and his men were gunned down in an alleged shootout with Karachi police on Sept 20, 1996. Zardari was arrested for conspiracy to murder shortly after the dissolution of the PPP government and was jailed for six years pending a trial in the case. On Wednesday, Justice Syed Pir Ali Shah allowed ZardariÂ’s criminal revision application challenging an order of the District and Sessions Court that had rejected ZardariÂ’s application for acquittal, which had been moved under Section 265-K of the Pakistan Criminal Procedure Code. The bench said that Special Public Prosecutor M Ilyas Khan conceded that all the prosecution witnesses regarding the conspiracy
“The court granted our application for the quashing of the case and exonerated my client,” Zardari’s lawyer, Shahadat Awan, told reporters outside the SHC building, AFP reported. “The prosecution failed to prove conspiracy charges and supporting evidence against our client in the Murtaza Bhutto murder case,” he added. The case was the latest in a string against Zardari that have been dropped since the PPP won the general elections on February 18.