PESHAWAR, March 21: The Peshawar High Court has fixed March 31 for hearing the appeal of a newsman convicted under the Blasphemy law last year. Munawar Mohsin, who was a sub-editor at the English Daily, The Frontier Post, was convicted by an additional district and sessions judge on May 8 , last year, and was sentenced to life and fined Rs50,000.

The appeal will be taken up for hearing by a two-member bench. The names of the judges on the bench will be announced a day before the hearing. The trial court had held Mr Mohsin responsible for publication of a blasphemous letter in the paper in its issue of Jan 29, 2001.

Since the publication of the letter, he had been in detention. Mr Mohsin has maintained that the publication of the letter was not an intentional act. He says that being a true Muslim he could never even think of committing such a heinous act.

Moreover, the convicted newsman was suffering from mental ailment and was in bad health, which was one of the major reasons for the publication of the letter.

Human rights bodies had also condemned the attitude of bar associations as the Peshawar Bar Association had passed a resolution asking its members not to represent the accused in the case before a trial court.

Soon after publication of the letter, theNWFP government had ordered a judicial inquiry which was conducted by Justice Qaim Jan Khan of the high court. During the inquiry the tribunal had examined the doctor concerned, Muhammad Tariq, of the mental hospital who informed the tribunal that Mr Mohsin had escaped from the hospital and they had informed the management of the newspaper.

The appellant has stated that the trial judge had committed grave illegality by not following mandatory provision of section 465 of the CPC, even when it was established during the prosecution evidence that the appellant had a history of mental illness and had received treatment for it.