LAHORE, Jan 6: A division bench of the Federal Shariat Court on Thursday took a serious view of absence of appeal by a convict, who was sentenced for gang-rape along with another man. The latter had moved court through an appeal.

Rafaqat Ali alias Kaka (23), from Jahanian, was sentenced by a sessions court of Khanewal to 25-year rigorous imprisonment and his co-accused, Muhammad Akhtar (17), also from the same town, was awarded a term of 10 years in jail in Nov 2002.

While Akhtar filed an appeal against the sentence, the court did not find such a plea by Rafaqat. Comprising Justice Saeedur Rehman Farrukh and Justice Zafar Pasha Chaudhry, the bench directed Assistant Advocate-General Raja Abdur Rehman to contact jail authorities and the Punjab home department and submit a report if Rafaqat had filed the appeal and, if so, which was the appellate forum.

Another legal point raised by the court was that an appeal was a right and if a convict was unable to exercise this right owing to his poor financial condition, the state was responsible for arranging his or her defence and the appellate court was obliged to appoint a counsel to defend the convict.

The Shariat court also observed that in case the convict was a pauper, the appeal should be filed by the jail superintendent as was provided under the law. It also observed that the appeal was sometimes misdirected to the high court, which was not a proper appellate forum in cases registered and tried under the Hudood Ordinance, 1979.

Another observation given by the court was that sometimes appeals were filed separately and not joined in one file, although the convicts were charged as co-accused. In such a situation, courts passed conflicting judgments which was an anomaly in dispensation of justice.

Rafaqat and Akhtar were charged with raping a teenager near a cotton farm of the area on Sept 12, 2000. They were sentenced by an additional sessions judge of Khanewal in Jahanian on Nov 12, 2002.