A sessions court in Lahore (Pakistan Punjab) awarded the death sentence to a man for committing blasphemy on Thursday, February 27. The FIR against the man was registered in 2020 under section 295 A & C of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). The complaint for lodging the FIR had been initiated by Islamist Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) leader Niaz Ahmad Noori. TLP is notorious for promoting a hardline interpretation of Islam and enforcing sharia in Pakistan.
Tehreek-e-Labbaik is known for advocating the killing of police, and calls for deaths of Supreme Court justices in cases where blasphemy cases are brought before them.
Incidentally, it bears mention here that this tendency of bringing charges against hundreds of young individuals for allegedly committing blasphemy has witnessed a sharp rise during the past few years. Most such cases are filed by private vigilante groups and they have been targeting “online blasphemy’’.
In the instant case, the TLP leader Noori, an Islamic preacher, had alleged that the accused uttered disrespectful remarks against Prophet Mohammad. During the trial proceedings held in the court, a former wife of the convict had also testified. She had presented an audio recording of the blasphemous remarks allegedly uttered by the man sentenced to death by hanging.
During the trial, the accused had alleged that the complaint and his former wife had hatched a conspiracy against him “to usurp his properties worth millions of rupees by implicating him in a fake case’’.
The defense counsel argued that no forensic analysis was conducted of the mobile phone used to record the alleged objectionable remarks by the accused. However, in his verdict, Additional District & Sessions Judge Syed Shahzad Muzaffar Hamdani said the cybercrime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had conducted a forensic analysis of the voice of the accused.
The judge ruled out false implication and held the testimony of accused person’s former wife’s as “impeccable and unquestionable’’.
“I feel no hesitation to infer that prosecution successfully proved the case/charge against the accused beyond a shadow of doubt and he (the accused) passed the blasphemous/profane remarks in respect of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and Islamic principles,” Judge Hamdani said. The judge handed down the death sentence to the accused under section 295 C, along with a fine of Rs 500,000.
A month ago, on January 30, an Islamabad district and sessions court had sentenced two men to death for “proliferating blasphemous content” online. One of the convicts had been arrested in Islamabad in 2021 for disseminating “blasphemous contents’’ to a WhatsApp group.
The sentences were passed by Sessions Judge Afzal Majoka who was also involved in hearing of some cases against former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Majoka had acquitted Imran and his wife Bushra Bibi in the infamous “iddat’’ case.
On January 27, a court in Rawalpindi had four men to death for posting blasphemous content online, according to prosecution lawyer. “They were sentenced to death … on Friday for spreading blasphemous content online against the Prophet Muhammad (PUBH) and the Quran,” Rao Abdur Raheem, a lawyer from the Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan, a private group which brought the case to court. Such groups promote hardline radical Islam and often demand death sentences for people accused by them of blasphemy.
Many international human rights organisations have strongly criticised the blatant misuse of draconian Section 295 and Section 298 of the Pakistan Constitution repeatedly. Several dozen people have been charged with blasphemy in Pakistan over the last few years; in almost all the cases, the charges of blasphemy appear to have been arbitrary, unfounded and malicious accusations.
These two sections have been used on a very large scale against the minority Ahmediya community also to intimidate them. It has often found that the blasphemy cases are readily and uncritically accepted by the police and the prosecuting authorities.
Section 295 of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws covers very wide a range of offenses related to blasphemy. Section 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code has multiple subsections, including 295A, 295B, and 295C, each dealing with a different aspect.
