Medical grounds: Crippled convict denied bail

He had requested that his punishment be suspended till his appeal was decided.

LAHORE: A division bench of Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday denied bail to a man convicted of blasphemy.

Shafqat Masih and his wife Shagufta, parents of four children, are on death row in separate jails on blasphemy charges. Shafqat Masih had requested bail on medical grounds.

The division bench, comprising Justice Muhammad Anwarul Haq and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmed, dismissed his application after hearing arguments.

Shafqat Masih has been confined to a wheel-chair due to a disability. He had requested the LHC to suspend his punishment till a final decision on his appeal, pending before the LHC, was taken.

His counsel said Shafqat Masih was suffering from severe bedsores and could not move without someone’s help. He said that there was no proper medical facility at the jail. He said that his health had deteriorated in prison and could die due to lack of medical treatment.

He said he was hopeful of acquittal in the LHC as there were serious contradictions in the statements of witnesses presented against him. He requested that his punishment be suspended till a decision on his appeal was taken. He said he wanted to spend the remaining time he had with his children and get proper medical treatment. His lawyer Nadeem Hassan told The Express Tribune said that Shafqat Masih had spent two months in the Faisalabad Jail hospital. “I filed the bail petition on advice of the jail hospital’s doctor as his condition is very serious,” he said. Giving details of the case, Nadeem said the trial court had sentenced the couple to death, disregarding the fact one cell phone and SIM was used to send the ‘blasphemous’ text messages they had supposedly sent. He said the complainant was represented by a team of lawyers who had threatened the judge. Hassan said the man and his wife were illiterate and could not read or write. “How could they send text messages?”

Shafqat Masih and his wife have been in prison since July 20, 2013, on an FIR registered against them by a local cleric. Toba Tek Singh Additional District and Sessions Judge Muhammad Amer Habib sentenced them to death on April 04, 2014, and fined them Rs 100,000. Shafqat Masih is being held at Faisalabad Central Jail and his wife at Jhang District Jail.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 27^th, 2015.