ISLAMABAD: Firebrand Maulana Abdul Aziz on Tuesday widened his legal battle for the enforcement of Sharia in the country by asking the Supreme Court to ensure that the families of those killed in the July 2007 military operation in Lal Masjid are paid blood money.

An application filed by advocate Tariq Asad on his behalf asks for the court to order the federal government to implement the judgment it had announced to the effect on October 2, 2007.

His plea, made just five days after he moved the court for the enforcement of Sharia, may be heard this week.

It said many people were killed in the military operation and the apex court had ordered the Islamabad police to register cases of alleged defiling of the Holy Quran, to verify the antecedents of those killed and record the statements of their legal heirs to determine their entitlement for the payment of compensation in the form of ‘diyat’, subject to the verification by the sessions judge Islamabad.

And the Capital Development Authority (CDA) was required to build a new madressah in place of the mosque’s Jamia Hafsa girl seminary that was damaged in the operation and razed to the ground later.

Instead of implementing the orders, the applicant said, the federal government executed an out-of-court settlement with the principal of Jamia Hafsa. A contempt of court petition was filed against the then secretary interior Kamal Shah and chairman CDA Kamran Lashari on July 25, 2008, for that action, which was heard by the court after four and a half years.

Even then, instead of issuing notices to the respondents, AIG Police Tahir Alam was summoned “and despite a clear and speaking order of the court” the contempt proceedings were never initiated, says the applicant.

“It is a matter of constitutional principle that when rights are transgressed, a remedy must be provided; when a legal injury was caused by reason of violation of any constitutional right then the relief which meets the ends of justice cannot be refused.”

Indeed, the Maulana feels aggrieved not just at the government’s failure to implement the Supreme Court orders but also at what he calls powerlessness of the judiciary.

“One of the principal functions of the judiciary is to adjudicate upon the legality of the exercise of powers by their functionaries of the state and because of this nature of work entrusted to the judiciary, it was envisaged in the constitution that the judiciary shall be independent,” he says in the application.

And adds: “The judiciary has become powerful, but not independent. It is powerful for the weak, but weak for the powerful.”

His regret is that the contempt of court petition is still pending adjudication, so is a suo motu case of 2007 regarding the Lal Masjid episode and the legal heirs of the deceased and missing in the military operation are still waiting for the redress of their grievance since July 2007.

Maulana Aziz says that as the aggrieved persons were deprived of relief and justice, “they have become desperate.”

In his petition filed on December 10, seeking the enforcement of Sharia, he asserted that that is the only way to meet the challenges facing the country in the realm of national security, societal cohesion, national economy and success in the war on terror.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2015