LAHORE: The hearing of an appeal against the death sentence of former university lecturer Junaid Hafeez could not take place on Wednesday as the case was removed from the cause list of a two-judge bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC).

According to the cause list issued on Saturday for the ongoing week, the appeal was scheduled to be heard on March 19 by a division bench comprising Justice Shehram Sarwar Chaudhry and Justice Sardar Akbar Ali.

The appeal was listed as the last case on the “red cause list” of regular cases before the bench, which contained a total of eight cases. The LHC introduced red cause lists in 2015 to prioritize the disposal of old cases.

However, two days before the hearing, the appellant’s counsel was informed by the LHC office via text message that the case had been rescheduled.

The updated cause list, published on the LHC website and mobile application, showed that only the last case had been removed from the bench’s schedule.

Hafeez — a former visiting lecturer at the Department of English Literature of the Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU) — was arrested by police on March 13, 2013, and his trial started in 2014.

He was sentenced to death by a Multan district and sessions court on Dec 21, 2019, on blasphemy charges. His appeal against the sentence has been pending since 2020.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2025