ISLAMABAD: A senior counsel representing some petitioners before the Supreme Court on Thursday requested the secretary for placing a letter he wrote to the special three-judge committee stating that the earlier six-judge bench that heard intra-court appeals (ICAs) against the military court case has not been constituted properly and, therefore, it should be reconstituted.

On Thursday, Advocate Faisal Siddiqui wrote a four-page letter to the secretary with a request to place the letter before the committee constituted under Section 2 of the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act, 2023, that fixes cases before different benches so that the six-judge Supreme Court bench, which will resume hearing on a set of ICAs against the Oct 23 judgement, should be reconstituted.

The bench is likely to hear the matter in the third week of Jan 2024.

Headed by Justice Sardar Tariq Masood, the bench by a majority of five to one had suspended on Dec 13 the Oct 23 short order of declaring as unconstitutional the trial of 103 civilians for their alleged involvement in the May 9 violence.

The letter highlighted that the purported minutes of the fourth meeting of the committee had recorded that the committee has decided to constitute a larger bench to hear ICAs against the Oct 23 short order.

The letter said that no six-judge bench of the court was constituted in the fourth meeting of the committee and rather only a future intention was recorded that a larger bench will be constituted in a future meeting of the committee.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2023