The review petition against the acquittal of those accused in the infamous Mukhtar Mai gang rape case of 2002 has been fixed for hearing in the Supreme Court for Wednesday.

A three-member bench of the apex court, under Justice Gulzar Ahmed's stewardship, will hear the review petition, which the plaintiff, through her counsel Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan, had filed in May 2011.

Mai was gang-raped in June 2002 on the orders of a village council as punishment after her younger brother was accused of having illicit relations with a woman from a rival clan.

Read: Mukhtar Mai: More questions than answers

She had accused 14 men of being involved in the rape and in Aug 2002, an anti-terrorism court had sentenced six men to death — four for raping Mai and two for being part of that jirga. The remaining eight were released.

Later, the Lahore High Court's Multan bench, on separate appeals, acquitted five of the convicts and converted the death sentence of Abdul Khaliq to life imprisonment.

Mai had subsequently challenged their acquittal in the top court. However, the Supreme Court, in its April 2011 verdict, had rejected her appeal by a majority of two to one — much to the consternation of rights activists.

That three member bench had featured Mian Shakirullah Jan and future chief justices Nasirul Mulk and Mian Saqib Nisar. The dissenting note was penned by Nasirul Mulk.

Mai, whose ordeal and struggle for justice has seen her become the voice of oppressed women, sought the constitution of a larger bench, instead of a three-judge bench.

In her review petition, Mai stated that the apex court's verdict was a great miscarriage of justice because it stemmed from misreading and non-reading of material evidence on file.

Appearing on behalf of the petitioner, senior counsel Ahsan had argued that there were at least nine instances where evidence had not been noticed, which was enough to prove that the 2011 judgment could not be sustained and was therefore contrary to the fundamental rules of dispensation of justice.

Though the recently retired Nisar had ruled against Mai in the court's April 2011 verdict, in April 2014, a bench under his stewardship had sought all the evidence in the case — only to be informed that the evidence was not available in the court’s records as it had been sent back to the trial court.