LAHORE: A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed bail petitions of two suspects involved in lynching of a Christian couple in Kot Radha Kishan.

Advocate Akram Qureshi, the counsel for Nisar and Akram, contended that his clients were passersby and were not involved in the lynching of the couple.

To support his claim, he cited a decision of LHC Justice Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi who had granted bails to two accused Tajamul and Hanif on the ground of being passersby.

During the course of Friday’s hearing, the SC bench comprising Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry and Justice Umar Ata Bandial observed that it seemed that Justice Naqvi (of the LHC) did not know the ‘definition of passersby’ who himself declared two other suspects as ‘passersby’ and accepted their bail applications.

The bench remarked that decisions of the LHC on bail matters of co-accused were mostly flawed, therefore, ‘the SC has abandoned granting bails to other accused on the basis of bails granted to the ‘co-accused’.

Justice Chaudhry further remarked that a joint investigation team had written both Nisar and Akram as guilty and noted that they incited protesters to burn both husband and wife alive.

The bench observed that they should have stopped people from lynching couple rather than inciting people to committing this crime. The bench rejected their bail petitions.

A mob of around 400 people lynched Shahzad and Shama for their alleged role in desecrating the Holy Quran in last November. Both husband and wife were brick kiln workers from Chak-59 of Kot Radha Kishan, a town in Kasur district.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2015

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