LAHORE: The hearing of an appeal filed by a former university lecturer, Junaid Hafeez, against his death sentence in a blasphemy case could not take place on Monday despite the matter being included in the red cause list of a two-judge bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC).
The LHC registrar office issues a red cause-list for old cases to ensure their priority hearing and early disposal. This practice was introduced in 2015.
The appeal of Hafeez was on third number among five cases fixed in the red cause list of the division bench comprising Justice Shehram Sarwar Chaudhry and Justice Muhammad Tariq Nadeem.
The bench heard only the first case from its red cause list on Monday, while remaining matters, including Hafeez’s appeal, were not called for a hearing.
The registrar office is now expected to fix a fresh date for the hearing. Cases left over from the cause list are generally rescheduled after at least two weeks.
No substantive hearing of the appeal has taken place in the high court for around the last one year.
The case record shows that the hearings of the appeal have frequently been rescheduled a day before its fixed date.
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, May 19th, 2026
