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ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on Tuesday told Dr Babar Awan, counsel appearing in Presidential Reference, that they wanted the requisite record over the murder trial of late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the country's first elected prime minister, to reach to a correct decision and set a judicial precedent.
Heading an eleven-member bench seized with hearing of Presidential Reference sent to it under Article 186 of the Constitution for revisiting the murder trial of late ZAB, the Chief Justice expressed his wonder as to how the hearing of private complaints was dropped by the Lahore High Court Full Bench which suddenly took up the case registered in FIR in 1977.
Attorney General for Pakistan Movli Anwarul Haq read out a letter of deputy registrar LHC saying that record of three complaints out of total five including those of Ahmed Raza Kasuri, Abdul Waris Malik and Malik Iftikhar Ahmed Tari were traced.
He apprised the bench that the record of trial held inside the jail could not be found.
Khawja Haris, advocate general Punjab, informed the bench that a firing incident of Liaquat Bagh in 1977 was also transferred to the LHC.
The Chief Justice told them that they required the relevant record to understand as to why hearing of private complaints was stopped.
About Shafiur Rehman's report, he observed that the federal government had shown its intention to make it public but so far it was not done.
The Attorney General maintained that they had no objection to making public contents of the report but the problem was that they were not in possession of the original record.
The Chief Justice told Dr Awan that a PPP leader from Punjab Rana Shaukat Mahmood had written a book which contained startling revelations about those private complaints lodged against late ZAB.
He also suggested to him to take guidance from the interviews of late Yahya Bakhtiar, counsel for ZAB.
The Chief Justice also sought his assistance to trace out record over holding of trial inside the jail.
Upon bench's inquiry, the counsel read out portion of decision in which former justice Durab Patel, a member of the bench, had expressed his opinion and said that according to his opinion there was no case against late ZAB.
The counsel winding up his arguments cited various judicial sentences of UK and US in which conviction or sentences were overturned.
He cited Liverpool shooting case which was the longest murder trial in UK, a case of Arkansas Supreme Court of 1893, 1952 case of London, burglary case of 1953 of UK in which the convict was hanged and in 1993 a panel quashed his conviction, Texas arson case of 2009.
He contended that in these pardon cases, actions or inactions by the executive were dominant which also intervened in the process.
He said the Referring authority here was also asking for similar intervention by the Court.
He said late ZAB's case was based upon three aspects which the Court had to deal with, lack of due process, violation of fundamental rights and bias.
Dr Babar reading out from the proceedings of the case said that name of Rao Rashid, a new accused in the complaint case cropped up.
He said these complaints were kept pending with the larger bench while it decided the challan case.
He read out Asif Ali Zardari's case of 2001 and said the apex Court had adequately dealt with issue of bias.
To Justice Javed's query he replied that late ZAB did not give his statement as he wanted decision over bias.
The bench asked Attorney General to start his arguments on Wednesday over the case after Dr Babar Awan concluded his arguments.
The Chief Justice told him that his opinion would be of great significance of the bench as principal law officer of the Court.
