Pakistan Gender News Voice of Gender News From Pakistan
By: Faisal Kamal Pasha
ISLAMABAD: Islamabad High Court (IHC) Chief Justice Iqbal Hameed-ur-Rehman on Tuesday sought record, from the Ramna Police Station, of the case of Rimsha Masih, a Christian girl implicated in alleged desecration of religious text, who has filed an application for quashing the FIR against her.
The court directed Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri to assist the court in the case and directed the station house officer (SHO) of the police station concerned to personally appear before the court and submit a detailed reply. The counsel for Rimsha contended that the allegations levelled against her were false, as was evident from the statement of a prosecution witness.
He said there was a clear contradiction in the statements of the prosecution witnesses, including Hafiz Malik Zubair, and contents of the FIR as well as there was no proof against her. As per the statement of the prosecution witnesses, the local police arrested Hafiz Muhammad Khalid Jadoon for allegedly mixing pages of the religious scripture in the ashes while according to the medical reports the petitioner was also a juvenile. The petitioner also prayed to the court to stop the law-enforcement agencies from harassing her and her family. The court would resume hearing in the case on September 28.
In one another case, Justice Riaz Ahmad Khan of the IHC dismissed a petition declaring it non-maintainable. The petitioner, Tanvir Chaudhry, Advocate, had prayed to the court to direct the government broaden the ambit of the blasphemy law to foreign nationals also. The petitioner had contended that since the persons committing blasphemy mostly belonged to other countries, the blasphemy law should be made applicable also to citizens of other countries so that it could take its course against whosoever commits blasphemy in the whole world. He had contended that a blasphemer should be tried in Pakistani courts and if a foreign government did not cooperate with the Pakistan government, it should sever its ties with that country.
