MULTAN, March 3: A division bench of the Lahore High Court on Thursday overturned the convictions of five of the six accused who had been sentenced to death for raping a woman in Meerwala.

The bench comprising Justice Ijaz Chaudhry and Justice M.A. Shahid Saddiqi commuted the death sentence of the sixth accused, Abdul Khaliq, to life imprisonment. The bench which had been hearing the convicts' appeals for the past three days, declared in a short order that the evidence produced before the trial court was insufficient and there were faults in the police investigation.

Mukhtar Mai was allegedly raped by four men on the orders of a Panchayat called by the Mastoi clan which had accused her teenage brother Abdul Shakoor of having illicit relations with a girl of the clan.

The incident drew international attention and at one stage US President George Bush referred to it while presenting arguments in favour of what he called his war against 'barbaric societies' on the globe.

Police had submitted a charge-sheet in the Dera Ghazi Khan anti-terrorism court after arresting 14 people accused in the FIR. The court tried the accused in camera and in its verdict on Aug 31, 2002, sentenced to death chief juror Faiz Bakhsh Mastoi, juror Ramzan Pachaar and Abdul Khaliq, Allah Ditta, Fayyaz and Ghulam Farid. The court acquitted the eight others.

The convicts appealed to the high court against the verdict while Mukhtar Mai filed a suit in the high court against the acquittal of the eight accused. After hearing the ruling of the bench, she broke down and started crying. Later, taking to newsmen, she vowed to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court.

Lawyers of the accused had said that there were contradictions in the woman's statements. They had also argued that the sentence could not be handed down merely on the statement of the woman.