ISLAMABAD – The Islamabad High Court on Wednesday reserved its verdict on a plea filed by murder convict Shafqat Hussain challenging the court’s single bench May 11 verdict, which declared that the petition calling for the formation of a judicial commission to determine Hussain’s age was not maintainable.
A divisional bench comprising Justice Noor ul Haq Qureshi and Justice Shaukat Siddiqui reserved the verdict after Hussain’s counsel concluded his arguments on the maintainability of the case.
In his arguments, Tariq Hassan said that Justice Athar Minallah had dismissed his application against the inquiry conducted by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on the orders of the interior ministry.
He said that the inquiry should be conducted by a judicial forum and argued that the President of Pakistan can order an inquiry into it.
Justice Siddiqui remarked that the counsel would not have challenged the inquiry had the report been in Hussain’s favour. Justice Qureshi further questioned if the facts of the case could be challenged in the mercy appeal.
Among the grounds, Hassan maintained that the single bench had already held that FIA’s inquiry report was illegal. “However, the final order did not address the same, which is a material error on the face of the record,” he stated.
“The fact that respondents three and four (interior ministry and FIA) are not legally empowered or even otherwise competent to determine the age of the petitioner was never addressed in the impugned order,” he added.
The court had repeatedly directed the petitioner to present any precedent from where a case was reopened by a lower court after being decided by the country’s apex court as a case could not be opened once proceedings had reached finality.
In its observations, the court had said that the article published in the British daily ‘The Independent’ by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the anti-death-penalty group Reprieve, was factually incorrect. The order stated that the perusals of the contents show that the author was not aware of the actual facts of the case.
During proceedings in the instant case, it has been noticed that, in their exuberance, some journalists and activists raised undeserved alarm without verifying the facts or examining the record, the verdict stated.
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