Bail plea of blasphemy suspect dismissed

Petitioner had said that prosecution was delaying proceedings.

LAHORE: An additional district and sessions’ judge on Tuesday dismissed an after-arrest bail petition of a man under trial on charges of blasphemy.

Petitioner Adnan had submitted that his trial was underway for over two years and its conclusion was not in sight. He said the prosecution was delaying the matter on one pretext or the other. Meanwhile, he said, he had been imprisoned. He requested the court to grant him a bail in the matter.

However, Advocate Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhary, counsel for the complainant, had denied that the delay was because of the prosecution. He said the court record could be examined to show that the suspect himself was responsible for the delay. He said the suspect had earlier failed to secure the counsel of a lawyer.

He said that when the suspect got a counsel, he resorted to seeking adjournments of proceedings of the case.

At an earlier hearing, the court had directed that Sections 295-A and 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code be removed from the petition. It had observed that evidence produced before the court was not sufficient to support the charges. However, it had maintained the charges against the suspect under Section 295-C of the PPC.

The complainant’s counsel had sought directions for removal of charges under Section 295-A only. The suspects had requested that charges under all three sections be dropped. He had held that the complainant got the FIR registered to humiliate and blackmail him.

He had denied the charges and said that the charges were based on the claim that he had allegedly written some words and made some signs in a book that could be interpreted as having outraged the feelings of Muslims.

He had said that there was no evidence on the record to prove any of those allegations.

The FIR registered by the Town Ship police had said that Abid Mehmood, an employee at a bookshop, found derogatory statements written in a book Adnan took for reading at a bookshop.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2016.