Bail plea dismissed as ‘trial is near completion’

‘Police probe is done. Incarceration before the final judgment is unnecessary’

LAHORE: An additional district and sessions judge has dismissed an after-arrest bail petition filed by a woman held for over two years in a blasphemy case. Judge Chaudhary Azam has said that the suspect’s release on bail is unnecessary at a time when the trial is near conclusion.

The judge has set April 9 (tomorrow) for recording of the statement of the investigation officer, the last prosecution witness against Waleeha Arfaat. Arfaat is accused of having defiled Holy Quran at her home more than three years ago on March 3, 2012.

In her bail application filed (and dismissed) last Friday, petitioner Arfaat had submitted that with the completion of police investigation, there was no reason why she could not be released on bail while the case was under trial.

Friday’s application was her fourth bail plea since her arrest on charges of defiling Holy Quran.

The petitioner has denied the allegations and said that she has been implicated in a false case by the complainant, Abdul Mona’im Shah. She has said that during investigation neither Shah, who was her neighbour, nor the other prosecution witness, Muhammad Boota, had claimed to have seen her defile the Holy Quran.

She has stated that the burnt pages of the Holy Quran recovered from her house during investigation must have been planted there by Saim Khan, a third prosecution witness. “I had had a quarrel with Khan a few days before the registration of the FIR ,” she has said. In the FIR, the complainant has stated that Saim Khan had led him and Boota to the suspect’s house where they allegedly saw her sitting next to a defiled copy of the Holy Quran. “I was patrolling the street when she (Saim Khan) came out of house at around 5am in the morning and started shouting and accusing her of blasphemy,” he has said. He has added that Khan stopped shouting only when he and Boota agreed to break into the house and prevent the suspect from defiling the Quran.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8^th, 2015.