Ghazi Ilmuddin case: ‘Can an English law order be set aside?’

Petitioner wants the death sentence issued by the LHC in 1929 to be nullified.

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday, hearing a petition for the reopening of the Ghazi Ilmuddin Shaheed case, asked the petitioner’s counsel to come up with convincing arguments regarding whether the court could set aside a sentence awarded under English law.

The judge asked Barrister Farooq Hassan, the petitioner’s counsel, to apprise him whether the High Court could hear a petition for the reopening of a case decided by the same court then comprising of English judges or if the Supreme Court had jurisdiction in this regard.

The judge adjourned the hearing for next week as the counsel sought time to prepare arguments on the points raised by the court.

The petition was filed by Imtiaz Rasheed Qureshi, of Save Judiciary Committee, praying for a judicial order to nullify the death sentence awarded to Ghazi Ilmuddin in 1929 by a division bench of the LHC court then comprising of English judges.

The court, he said, did not appreciate the arguments made by Mohammad Ali Jinnah in defence of Ilmuddin. He said the court left a big lacuna by not recording the reasons why defence submissions were not admissible.

The petitioner said the bench produced a one-page judgment skipping many steps. The bench thus failed to make sense of the circumstances which prompted Ilmuddin to murder Ram Pal, who published a book against the Holy Prophet (pbuh), he said. He added that Ilmuddin killed Pal in a fit of strong emotion roused by a speech he had heard against Pal at Masjid Wazir Khan.

The petitioner prayed to the court to declare the execution of Ilmuddin unlawful and unjust as the bench had overlooked relevant facts. The petitioner also prayed to the court to hold that Ilmuddin was entitled to a civil award. He said Ilmuddin had committed no offence and merited the same honour as shown to Ireland’s Gary Casement posthumously.



Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2011.