PESHAWAR, Nov 12: The Peshawar High Court on Friday acquitted a journalist who had been convicted by a trial court in a blasphemy case. A two-member bench accepted the criminal appeal of Munnawar Mohsin Ali, a sub-editor of The Frontier Post daily, and set aside the conviction.

Mr Ali was convicted by an additional district and sessions judge on July 8 last year and was sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs50,000. The trial court had held Mr Ali responsible for publication of a blasphemous letter in the paper in its issue of Jan 29, 2001. Since the publication of the letter, Mr Mohsin has been in detention.

The high court's bench observed that the prosecution had failed to prove that the appellant had intentionally published the letter. The court said that the evidence on record proved that the appellant was not aware of the contents of the blasphemous letter.

The court observed that in his statement, Mr Ali had clearly stated that he was a Muslim and he could not even think of committing such a crime. The appeal was filed by human rights activist Kamran Arif, and Barrister Zahoorul Haq pleaded his case.

The court had reserved its judgment in the case on Sept 29 after completion of arguments of both the parties. The judgment was announced on Friday. The case was registered by the then director information department, Mehdi Hussain, at West Cant police station under sections 295 (A), (B) and (C) and 505 of Pakistan Penal Code.

The blasphemous letter was purportedly written by a person named Ben DZec and it appeared in the "Your Views" column of the newspaper. After the publication of the letter, occurrence violent mobs set on fire the office of the newspaper and other public property including a cinema house.

The appellant's counsel contended that the element of criminal intention should be seen in such offences. He referred to sections 295 (A), 295 (B) and 295 (C) of the Pakistan Penal Code, arguing that in the first two sections the words 'deliberate', 'malicious intentions' and 'wilfully' were mentioned.

He argued that section 295 (C) was added in the PPC through Criminal Law (Amendment) Act III of 1986. He added to section 295 (C) should be read in continuity with the other two sections and unless the offence was committed with criminal intention a person could not be held responsible for it.