With the Supreme Court scheduled to deliver a brief ruling today, all eyes will be on the presidential referral against former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death sentence.
The 1979 ruling in the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto case, which remains the only occasion in the history of the South Asian nation in which a former premier was executed, was the subject of a presidential referral hearing that was resolved by the highest court.
The panel, chaired by Pakistan’s Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, had reserved the case’s short order; a condensed version is scheduled to be made public on Wednesday. The prospect of providing a short opinion under Article 187 of the Constitution was discussed throughout the hearing.
The nation’s highest court heard the presidential reference brought out by former President Asif Ali Zardari in April 2011 in order to hear arguments on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death sentence.
The government was attempting to find out how Masood Mehmood, the former head of the Federal Security Force who later became an approver in the case, left the country and relocated to the United States, where he ultimately passed away, the Additional Attorney General told the court during the hearing.
The complainant in the Bhutto case, Ahmad Raza Khan Kasuri, voiced worries that the Supreme Court’s ruling may spark a barrage of referrals that would diminish the court’s prestige.
In 1978, Bhutto was condemned to death by the Lahore High Court for allegedly orchestrating an attempt on her life. During the PPP’s tenure in office from 2008 to 2013, a reference was made to the highest court in order to obtain an opinion based on the fundamental rights protected by the Constitution.
