ISLAMABAD, Oct 27: The Qarshi Foundation, on the recommendation of jail authorities, paid Rs630,000 as Diyat for a man who had destroyed three organs of his wife, Zainab Noor, by electric shocks, despite all his pretensions to piety.

After having spent over six years in jail, Qari Sharif, who is a Hafiz-i-Quran, is now reportedly preaching religion in association with the Tablighi Jamaat.

Qari Sharif, a prayer-leader at a village Nara Mator mosque in Kahuta, was convicted on the charge of destroying three organs — rectum, urinary bladder and vagina — of his wife’s body by placing iron rods in there and passing electricity.

He was originally awarded a 30-year-imprisonment by the Rawalpindi’s Suppression of Terrorist Activities Court. However, the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench reduced the period of imprisonment from 30 years to 10 years by just replacing a word with another. The trial court had ordered that the convict would have to consecutively undergo 10 years’ imprisonment on three counts — for destroying three organs of her wife. This meant that he would have remained in jail for 30 years. It was the maximum punishment under the law.

However, the LHC, in its capacity as an appellate court, replaced the word “consecutively” with “concurrently”, thereby reducing the period of imprisonment from 30 years to just 10.

The owner of the Qarshi Dawa Khana, Iqbal Qarshi, was not available for comments when the Qarshi Foundation office was contacted to ascertain as to why it had paid Diyat for a person who had committed a crime, on hearing the details of which, every civilized person would shudder.

However, an official of the Qarshi Foundation, who identified himself as supervisor Azhar, told Dawn on telephone that Qarshi Foundation had made a collective payment of about Rs10 million for those convicts who were languishing in jails dueto their inability to pay Diyat.

“It had been done on the recommendation of Punjab prison authorities,” he said. “The individual details of beneficiaries were not ascertained by the Foundation. Qari Sharif may have been one of them,” he said.

The whole episode smacks of wrongdoing on the part of Adiyala jail authorities who included his name in the list of deserving people.

The Lahore High Court, which had changed the sentence from a “consecutive” to a “concurrent” one, had specifically denied Qari Sharif the benefit of section 382 of CrPC under which the convicts are entitled to remissions.

Mr Sharif, who was arrested in February 1994, came out of jail in January 2001, in less than seven years. No jail official was available to explain under what law, he had been given the concessions.

Qari Sharif had stated before the trial court that his maximum property would not be more than Rs20,000 and had he not been lucky enough to get the support of Qarshi Foundation, he would have remained in jail even after the completion of imprisonment. Under the Islamic law, no convict can come out of jail without the payment of his Diyat, Arsh or Daman .

The Supreme Court on Friday reserved its judgment on the appeals of Zainab Noor and Qari Sharif. It was doubtful that if the apex court decided to restore the original judgment under which his terms of imprisonments would have gone “consecutively”, the convict would still be in the reach of the police.