Mubarak Sani case
\nISLAMABAD
\nThe Supreme Court has approved the federal government\u2019s appeal to expunge controversial paras from the contentious Mubarak Sani case verdict.
\nA three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa and comprising Justice Irfan Saadat Khan and Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan, on Thursday (today) heard the Centre\u2019s plea alongside the Punjab government\u2019s petition seeking amendments to the top court verdict of February 6.
\nThe apex court had overturned the conviction of sacrilege accused Sani, who sought deletion of certain charges framed against him in the case filed under Punjab Holy Quran (Printing and Recording) (Amendment) Act.
\nIn its judgment, the court had noted that the offence that the defendant had been accused of was not criminalised till 2021. Consequently, the apex court set aside the conviction and ordered the immediate release of the petitioner.
\nAfter the verdict, the provincial government filed a review petition on the SC verdict under Article 188 of the Constitution, but on July 24 the top court declared it did not deviate in any way from the decisions of the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) and the Supreme Court, in approving the bail of the sacrilege accused.
\nThe verdict favouring Sani drew outrage among religious circles, and a debate in the National Assembly\u2019s Standing Committee on Law and Justice where both the treasury and opposition benches agreed that the federal government file a petition in the Supreme Court.
\nBesides the Punjab government\u2019s plea seeking omissions of certain portions from the court\u2019s July 24 revised verdict, the Centre also filed a miscellaneous plea on August 17 as per Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif\u2019s directives.
\nThe Punjab government in its petition maintained that some leading clerics and members of parliament requested the federal government to approach the top court and highlight some portions of the verdict that they said merited correction.
\nIt further maintained that certain conclusions and observations made in other parts of the judgment seem to be a mistake and inconsistent with previous rulings of the highest court.
\nJamiat Ulema-e-Isfam Fazl\u2019s Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani of Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi among the other religious scholars, who requested the federal government for approaching the apex court, attended today\u2019s hearing.
\nIn the short verdict, the top court said the paras excluded from the verdict cannot be cited as precedent in any judgment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mubarak Sani case ISLAMABAD The Supreme Court has approved the federal government\u2019s appeal to expunge controversial paras from the contentious Mubarak Sani case verdict. A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa and comprising Justice Irfan Saadat Khan and Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan, on Thursday (today) heard the Centre\u2019s plea alongside the Punjab …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69260,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69244\/revisions\/69260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}