The recent judgements of the trial court of Lahore and the Model Criminal Trial Court of Attock have once again given a chance to rights defenders across Pakistan and around the globe to debate on blasphemy laws of the country.
In the month of September, two people were sentenced to death after being found guilty of committing blasphemy under section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code 1860 i.e. Salma Tanvir, and Muhammad Islam aka Tutti (aged 62) from Attock district of Punjab (abandoned by his family on account of his implication in such like case). Muhammad Islam alias Tutti was sentenced to death on 13th September, 2021 by the Model Criminal Trial Court of Attock (in jail-trial), headed by Additional District and Sessions Judge Javed Iqbal Bosal, after finding him guilty of an offence under section 295 C PPC 1860, that was said to have happened in April 2019 in the Meena Bazar of Attock district where Tutti used to work as a tailor.
The complainant in the case had placed an application for registration of first information report (FIR) levelling that Tutti committed blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H), and pious people when the complainant was discussing Seerat-ul-Nabi on the morning of 6 April, 2019 with his friends and colleagues. However, the allegation levelled against Salma Tanvir was that she claimed to be the Prophet and functioned as a school principal. Tutti remained in prison without a trial until October, 2020 because the legal practitioners from the Attock Bar Association refused to take up his case on the ground that he was not eligible to be given a fair or to be represented in court, considering the nature and gravity of the offence he had been accused of. Thereafter, a lawyer from the Lahore Bar Association took up his case on humanitarian grounds and represented him in a jail trial, despite the sheer risks to his life and also the sensitivity involved in the whole process of a jail trial related to blasphemy.
Blasphemy as offence had been included in PPC 1860 in 1985, and death penalty for blasphemy under section 295 C was prescribed as the only punishment by the Federal Court of Pakistan in 1991 while decided by a petition moved by one Ismail Qureshi. However, Ismail Qureshi admitted during the pendency of the petition that “some ulema argued that blasphemy was a forgivable offence and some even said that the ruler could award a lesser punishment than death”.
Immediately, after the deletion of alternative imprisonment, the cases involving blasphemy arose all across Pakistan against Christians and Ahmedis. It emerged as a tool– where there was a dispute pertained to business rivalry to grab property and it remained a lucrative business for a quite a few clerics and fanatics to implicate non-Muslims to establish their hegemony. Further, those accused of blasphemy neither remained safe behind the walls of prisons, nor in custody of the police during physical remand proceedings, nor inside the courts.
In recent years, rampant lawlessness and the emergence of a radical approach in the society of Pakistan have led to those accused of blasphemy to either be killed extra-judicially by the charged and violent mob or the courts sentenced them to death without paying heed to the evidence. Most recently, a man had been killed in a Peshawar trial court while standing trial on charges of blasphemy. On the other hand, assassins of the accused across Pakistan are termed as pious and their acts of killing those accused of blasphemy are glorified.
Apart from legal and social debates, the author believes that those accused of blasphemy all across Pakistan and those facing judicial proceedings/trials in general terms must be given fair trials in lines with Article 10 (A) of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 and United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.
After the acquittal of “Asiya” Bibi from the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and the acquittal of “Shagufta and Emmanuel” from the High Court in the wake of a resolution passed by the European Parliament, the situation across Pakistan until the time of this piece had not transformed as it was before.
Many individuals facing blasphemy charges have been kept in prisons without a trial and their trial proceedings are on standby. Figures recently released by a non-governmental entity, Legal Awareness Watch Pakistan provided that there are 38 individuals facing blasphemy charges in the Lahore Sessions Court. Out of those, 4 are women.
In the Muhammad Islam alias Tutti case, the Model Criminal Trial Court concluded proceedings in less than a year from the day of involvement of a legal practitioner in the case. Prior to that, Tutti remained unrepresented, having no one who could represent his case to establish his innocence.
The question arises: how can one be held accountable for blasphemy without a fair trial? A fair hearing and fair proceedings in all cases should be ensured by the authorities, particularly the courts. The latest judgements by the trial courts in the cases of Salma Tanvir, and Muhammad Islam Tutti provided that the moment a person is arrested on accusation of blasphemy, even falsely, he/she is considered as culprit, thus liable to be hanged.
The governments of Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf and Imran Khan all toyed with the idea of procedural changes but to no effect.
Blasphemy, from the day of its introduction, particularly from the day of deletion of alternative punishment, is a weapon in the hands of clerics, radicals even and sectarian warlords to undermine the civil liberties of non-Muslims. Like Salman Tanvir and Tutti, many have been languishing behind the walls of prisons, being supposedly falsely implicated in blasphemy, maybe because of their association with different denominations of Islam or because of diverse faiths.
*The writer is an advocate based in Lahore, Pakistan
October 4, 2021
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
