LAHORE: A man ordered freed by the Lahore High Court four and a half years ago is still awaiting his release because the PCO judges who heard his case were shown the door before they could write down their ruling.

Bashir Bhatti, accused of murder, was all but acquitted by a division bench of the LHC on July 30, 2009. The two-member bench announced the verdict in open court. However, it did not grant Bhatti liberty in “black and white”.

One member of the bench, Justice Mian Najamuz Zaman, had taken oath on the Provisional Constitution Order of Gen Pervez Musharraf on Nov 3, 2007. The other member was Justice Rana Zahid Mahmood, who was appointed by the ‘unconstitutional’ chief justice Abdul Hameed Dogar. Both bench members were hit by the decision one day after they had ordered the acquittal of Bhatti: the judgment of July 31, 2009, passed by a 14-member bench of the Supreme Court.

An anti-terrorism court of Rawalpindi had awarded death sentence to Bashir Bhatti on murder charges in 2004 while he had been in jail since 2002. He was one of four accused tried on charge of murdering three persons. Bhatti was the only one to be convicted. The LHC bench, comprising Justice Zaman and Justice Mahmood, allowed Bashir Bhatti appeal against the conviction and acquitted him on merit. However, the judges neither issued a short order nor handed down the detailed judgment before leaving the charge as judges. The acquitted man has since been languishing in jail.

In its July 31, 2009, ruling the Supreme Court had given protection to the decisions by the PCO judges. “Judgments delivered or orders made or any decrees passed by any bench of the Supreme Court or of any of the high courts which comprised of or which included the judges whose appointments had been declared void ab initio, are protected on the principle laid down in Malik Asad Ali’s case (PLD 1998 SC 161),” the judgment said.

Also, the then LHC chief justice, Sayed Zahid Hussain, had directed all the judges removed by the SC to complete their pending work before leaving the charge keeping in view the suffering of the common litigants, says a judge, who was also shown the door along with all other PCO judges.

Yet as Bhatti and his family waited, his acquittal order never materialised. In fact none was apparently ever drafted. It seems the judges who acquitted him had left the charge without completing their work.

An appeal is now pending for rehearing the case and has been fixed before different benches of the LHC. “The appeal will be heard afresh now as the order of July 30, 2009, unfortunately, has no legal significance,” says Azam Nazir Tarar, Bhatti’s counsel.

Advocate Tarar says the judges had announced in open court the order of allowing the appeal and staff of the court also mentioned the order in daily register of cases. Yet it brought no respite for Bhatti who has been in jail for the last 11 years. The judges were responsible to draft their ruling as announced in the open court even if they were not to be part of the bench from the next day, says Ahsan Bhoon, a ‘PCO judge’ removed by the July 31 judgment.