Pakistan: Prosecutors reject blasphemy case charge-sheet

...[A] deputy district prosecutor told Dawn that the charge-sheet was returned to the police with a few objections, adding that under the law a sub-inspector of police was not authorised to investigate such a case.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Daily Dawn | Pakistan
By Ishaq Tanoli | From the Newspaper
Posted: February 18, 2011

KARACHI, Feb 17: A charge-sheet submitted against a teenage blasphemy suspect is not being accepted by prosecution officials who maintain that the police have not adopted the proper procedure, it emerged on Thursday.

Seventeen-year-old Syed Samiullah is facing a charge of making blasphemous remarks about the Prophet (peace be upon him) in answer sheets of his intermediate examination around 10 months ago.


On Jan 29, a magistrate sent the suspect to the juvenile prison in judicial custody and directed the police to submit a charge-sheet of the case.

Sub-Inspector Qudrat Sher Lodhi of the Shahrah-i-Noor Jahan police station submitted the charge-sheet in the office of the district attorney (central).

However, a deputy district prosecutor told Dawn that the charge-sheet was returned to the police with a few objections, adding that under the law a sub-inspector of police was not authorised to investigate such a case.

He further said that it was also wrongly mentioned in the charge-sheet that the alleged offence was committed within the remit of the Shahrah-i-Noor Jahan police station as the examination centre of the suspect was located within the jurisdiction of the Sharea Faisal police station.

According to Section 156-A of the criminal procedure code, notwithstanding anything contained in this code, no police officer below the rank of a superintendent of police shall investigate the offence against any person alleged to have been committed by him under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Legal experts said it was highly deplorable that the relevant police officials had little knowledge of the blasphemy law and its procedure.

They claimed that most police officials were incompetent and lacked knowledge of the law which was one of the major factors behind the low conviction rate in the country and abuse of the blasphemy law.

According to the prosecution, the suspect was a first-year pre-engineering student in a private college.

He allegedly made blasphemous remarks in the answer sheets of the Physics and Islamic Studies papers during the annual examinations of intermediate held in April 2010.

It alleged that during an initial interrogation, the suspect had confessed to having committed the crime and stated that a few weeks before the examination, a couple of his cousins living in Norway had come to Pakistan and during their temporary stay, they used to influence his religious beliefs and tried to persuade him to commit such an offence.

A case (FIR 56/2011) was registered against the suspect under Section 295-C (use of derogatory remarks in respect of the Holy Prophet) of the Pakistan Penal Code on a complaint of an official from the Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, at the Shahrah-i-Noor Jahan police station.


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