ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down a request for early hearing of a pending appeal by Aasia Bibi against the Nov 2010 death sentence awarded to her by a trial court in a blasphemy case.

Advocate Saiful Malook, the counsel for Aasia Bibi, told Dawn that his client had requested the court to fix the matter in the first week of June.

The last time the case of the Christian woman — mother of two — was taken up by the court was on Oct 13, 2016, when a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar and comprising Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman and Justice Manzoor Ahmad Malik held a hearing.

Last hearing was held on Oct 13, 2016

But the hearing was adjourned immediately after commencement as Justice Rehman recused himself from the case because he had heard the petition of Mumtaz Qadri, a police commando and guard of former governor of Punjab Salman Taseer who had killed the governor in the federal capital on Jan 4, 2011.

On Oct 11, 2011, Justice Rehman was a member of the high court division bench which stayed the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, who had been convicted the same month of killing Mr Taseer.

Mr Malook said he had submitted the application for an early hearing of the appeal two weeks ago with a request to take up the matter since Aasia Bibi had been imprisoned for the past eight years and because she was innocent. The accused has been on death row since 2010.

But the court office told the lawyer that his application had been rejected.

While postponing the hearing on Oct 13, the Supreme Court in its order had stated that Justice Rehman believed that his presence in the bench might prejudice the Aasia Bibi case since her case and that of Mr Taseer was closely linked with each other.

On July 22, 2015, a three-judge Supreme Court bench had suspended the Oct 2014 Lahore High Court verdict of upholding the trial court’s order of Nov 2010 to sentence her to death for committing blasphemy during an argument with a Muslim woman in Sheikhupura in June 2009.

In her appeal, Aasia Bibi pleaded that the high court, while upholding the trial court sentence, had failed to take into consideration the statement made by her under Section 342 of the Code of Criminal Procedure wherein she clearly stated that she had offered oath to police on the Bible that she had never passed derogatory and shameful remarks against the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and the Holy Quran.

“But since the police had conspired with the complainant, they falsely booked her in this case. Besides, the prosecution witnesses were real sisters and interested in falsely involving the petitioner in the matter as they felt disgraced over a past altercation and hot words exchanged between them,” the appeal argued.

Besides, it said, the high court also failed to extend the benefit of doubt to Aasia Bibi on account of a long delay of five days in the registration of the FIR after alleged deliberation and consultation among different Muslim religious leaders, who gathered on different occasions before the registration of the case.

It was a well-settled principle of criminal law that unexplained delay in the registration of the criminal case, as was done in the 2002 Ayyub Maseeh case, caused serious doubts on the veracity of the evidence, the appeal argued.

Aasia Bibi contended in her appeal that she was living in the Sheikhupura village for long and there was no complaint against her before the blasphemy allegation.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2017