Aasia Bibi. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE
A three-judge special bench of the top court, led by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar and comprising Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel, will hear the matter at 1 pm. The registrar office has already issued notices to all parties including the Punjab prosecutor general.
Justice Khosa – who is the head of the bench hearing criminal appeals in murder blasphemy cases – has also been included in the special bench dealing with the Bibi’s case. He had also authored the verdict that justified the death penalty handed to Mumtaz Qadri in the murder case of former governor Salman Taseer.
Saiful Malook, the counsel for 51-year-old Bibi, told The Express Tribune that the apex court contacted his office and sought three paper books of the case. “We have provided the papers on Friday,” he said.
In April, Chief Justice Saqib Nisar had expressed intent to take up the case of the death-row prisoner.
Addressing Malook, he had said: “I myself will preside [over] the bench.”
In June 2009, Bibi had an argument with a group of women. Subsequently, she was accused of blasphemy. In 2010, she was awarded capital punishment by a lower court. In 2014, the Lahore High Court (LHC) upheld her death sentence. However, in July, 2015, the Supreme Court issued a stay order on her execution.
SC to take up Aasia Bibi case soon, says CJP
Bibi’s case was last heard on October 13, 2017 by a three-judge bench of the top court headed by the incumbent CJP and comprising Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman and Justice Manzoor Ahmad Malik.
The hearing was, however, quickly adjourned after Justice Rehman recused himself saying he was the Chief Justice of the Islamabad High Court when it had heard the Salmaan Taseer assassination case.
Punjab governor Taseer was assassinated on January 4, 2011 by his own bodyguard while the former was exiting a cafe in Islamabad’s Kohsar Market. Mumtaz Qadri, the bodyguard, later said he killed Taseer for his stance on the blasphemy law. Qadri was handed death sentence on October 1, 2011, and he was executed on February 29, 2016.
It will be interesting whether the PTI-led Punjab government will support or oppose Bibi’s death sentence.
Legal experts say it is a test case for the superior judiciary for a variety of reasons. Likewise, questions were also being raised over the pendency of Bibi’s appeal when the apex court was hearing criminal appeals of 2017 and 2018.
Security around the top court is likely to be beefed up on Monday. It is also learnt that representatives of various international NGOs and foreign missions are also taking interest in the case.
Issuing a written order dismissing Qadri’s appeal against his death sentence, Justice Khosa had urged the state to ensure no innocent person had to face an investigation or trial on the basis of false allegations of blasphemy.
In the 2015 verdict, the judge had observed that it was an unfortunate fact, which could not be disputed in many cases, that allegations of blasphemy were leveled for extraneous purposes and in absence of adequate safeguards against misapplication or misuse of the law by motivated persons. “The persons falsely accused of commission of that offence suffer beyond proportion or repair,” he had written in the order.
The order said that keeping in view the strong religious sentiments in society, it ought to be understood quite clearly that any call coming from serious quarters for reform in the laws regarding offences related to religion could only be a call for introducing safeguards against misapplication or misuse of such laws by motivated persons and such a call was ordinarily not to be construed as a call against the religious aspects of the offences covered by such laws.
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