ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court allowed the federal government on Monday to resubmit an amended appeal against the March 9 judgment of the Islamabad High Court accepting Mumtaz Qadri’s plea to annul a provision of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).

A two-judge SC bench headed by Justice Dost Mohammad Khan decided to jointly take up the appeals of the federal government as well as Mumtaz Qadri, who has been sentenced to death for killing former Punjab governor Salman Taseer in Islamabad on Jan 4, 2011.

“The high court judgment has raised many legal questions like should the culprit be booked under terrorism laws for murdering the governor of a province,” Justice Khan observed while postponing the proceedings to May 14.

The IHC had dismissed Qadri’s petition against the award of death sentence under the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), but accepted his application to declare Section 7 of the ATA void. The section provides for punishment of death for committing acts of terrorism.

The high court had observed that none of the prosecution witnesses, except one, and neither the investigating officer nor the prosecution evidence suggested that Qadri’s act amounted to an attempt to create panic, to intimidate and terrorise the public, or to create a sense of fear and insecurity among the public.

Qadri later filed an appeal in the apex court against the IHC verdict through his counsel Mian Nazeer Akhtar. It contended that the case did not fall under Section 302 of the PPC which envisaged capital punishment for intention to murder; rather Section 302(b) which deals with punishment for life imprisonment should have been applied.

Lahore High Court’s former chief justice Khawaja Mohammad Sharif, who is defending Qadri voluntarily, had told reporters that the award of death sentence was not in accordance with law and the Constitution because the murder was caused by provocation.

The government’s application filed through the interior ministry had challenged the high court’s order of omitting the ATA’s Section 7.

On April 8, the interior ministry moved an application requesting the Supreme Court to give it one week to file a proper appeal, along with paper books, because a 30-day period for moving appeals against the judgment was approaching.

The court asked the government to submit a proper petition so that it could be taken up, along with the appeal of Qadri, on May 14.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2015

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