The Lahore High Court (LHC) is scheduled to hear an appeal against the death sentence of former university lecturer Junaid Hafeez on March 19, as reported on Saturday.
Hafeez, previously a visiting lecturer in the Department of English Literature at Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU), was sentenced to death by a Multan district and sessions court on December 21, 2019, on charges of blasphemy.
He was arrested by police on March 13, 2013, following accusations of blasphemy, with his trial commencing in 2014.
According to an LHC cause list, a division bench comprising Justice Shehram Sarwar and Justice Sardar Akbar Ali will preside over the criminal appeal on March 19 (Wednesday).
Amnesty International stated that Hafeez, who was pursuing a graduate degree in English Literature, faced blasphemy charges due to Facebook posts.
The court found Hafeez guilty on all counts, sentencing him to 10 years in prison under Section 295-A (acts deliberately intended to insult religious beliefs), life imprisonment under Section 295-B (defiling the Holy Quran), and the death penalty under Section 295-C (using derogatory remarks about the Holy Prophet) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
In addition to the death sentence, Additional District and Sessions Judge Kashif Qayyum imposed fines of Rs0.5 million under Section 295-C and Rs0.1 million under Section 295-A. Failure to pay would result in an additional one-year imprisonment.
Hafeez was also sentenced to life imprisonment under Section 295-B and 10 years of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs100,000 under Section 295-A. The sentences were ordered to run consecutively.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan expressed its disappointment with the verdict.
Since the sentencing, Hafeez has been confined to the high-security ward number 2 of New Central Jail Multan.
A month before the verdict, Hafeez’s parents had appealed to then-Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khosa, expressing concerns for their son’s mental and physical well-being. They claimed Hafeez had been in solitary confinement since 2013 due to false blasphemy charges.
Throughout the trial, at least seven judges were transferred. Of the 26 prosecution witnesses, 15 testified against Hafeez, while 11 were deemed irrelevant and not summoned.
Due to security concerns, the Punjab home department relocated the trial to Multan Central Jail in April 2014.
Hafeez’s initial defense lawyer, Rashid Rehman, was assassinated in his office in May 2014. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had raised alarm a month earlier when Rehman received death threats. In December 2014, another lawyer representing Hafeez received a threat letter from the militant group Islamic State, warning him to withdraw from the case.
