LHC to hear appeal against academic Junaid Hafeez’s death sentence on March 19

The Lahore High Court (LHC) is set to hear an appeal against the death sentence of former university lecturer Junaid Hafeez on March 19, it emerged on Saturday.

Hafeez, a former visiting lecturer at the Department of English Literature of the Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU), was sentenced to death by a Multan district and sessions court on December 21, 2019 on blasphemy charges.

Formerly a visiting lecturer at the Department of English Literature of the BZU in Multan, Hafeez was booked on blasphemy charges and arrested by police on March 13, 2013. The trial of the case started in 2014.

According to a cause list issued by the LHC, a division bench headed by Justice Shehram Sarwar and including Justice Sardar Akbar Ali will take up the criminal appeal on March 19 (Wednesday).

According to Amnesty International, Hafeez, who was also in the process of getting a graduate degree in English Literature, was charged with blasphemy over Facebook uploads.

The court had found Hafeez guilty of all charges and handed down 10-year imprisonment under Section 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs); life term under Section 295-B (defiling, etc, of Holy Quran) and death sentence under Section 295-C (use of derogatory remarks, etc, in respect of the Holy Prophet) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

Besides sentencing to death, Additional District and Sessions Judge Kashif Qayyum had also imposed fines of Rs0.5 million and Rs0.1m under sections 295-C and 295-A of the PPC, respectively. In case of default, Hafeez would have to undergo an additional one-year imprisonment.

He was also sentenced to life imprisonment under Section 295-B, and 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs100,000 under Section 295-A of the PPC. All sentences were to run consecutively, as per the court.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had said it was dismayed by the verdict handed down to the academic.

Hafeez had been lodged in the high-security ward number 2 of New Central Jail Multan, as of when his punishment was announced.

A month before the sentence was handed down, the lecturer’s parents had appealed to then-chief justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khosa for justice for their son, fearing for his mental and physical health. They had stated that Hafeez had been languishing in solitary confinement since 2013 on the false charges of blasphemy.

At least seven judges were transferred through the course of Hafeez’s case. As many as 15 prosecution witnesses recorded their statements against Hafeez while 11 others were not called after being declared irrelevant.

The trial was shifted to the Multan Central Jail in April 2014 by the Punjab home department due to security concerns.

Hafeez’s previous lawyer, Rashid Rehman, was shot dead in May 2014 in his office. The month prior to it, the HRCP had expressed serious concerns when death threats were extended to Rehman, also the special task force coordinator of the commission.

In December 2014, another lawyer representing Hafeez also received a threat letter from the militant Islamic State group, warning him to withdraw from the case.