The upholding of the death sentence of Aasia Bibi by the Lahore High Court (LHC) is yet another dark chapter in the judicial history of Pakistan. The 50-year-old Christian woman, a brick-kiln labourer by profession, who was sentenced to death by a district and sessions court for allegedly having blasphemed against the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), had appealed that decision in the LHC. Now that her appeal has been rejected, she has 30 days to take this case to the Supreme Court but the pattern of such cases shows that it will take years for her to get justice, if she gets any. The problem remains that she has been imprisoned for over four years now, and that too based on false accusations as the accusers who lodged the complaint against her used the blasphemy law to settle a personal feud. Add to this the lack of prosecution witnesses in this case and all the facts go in favour of her innocence, but none of it seems sufficient to free the poor woman.
The story does not end here as a series of violent events ensued from this case and continue to haunt us, with some high profile figures like Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti — the then Punjab governor and the federal minister of minorities respectively — having lost their lives for standing up for the victim and voicing against the abusive use of the blasphemy law. The fact that attempts to repeal it have been thwarted, with some paying for it with their lives or receiving life threats, logic demands alternate ways to provide justice. Is there any law that can save a person who has been falsely accused? And is there is any punishment for the one who falsely accuses someone? Or will the clouds of such travesties of justice permanently loom over our heads? One can find plenty of cases where witch-hunts, vigilante mobs, land grabs and assassinations have been carried out under the umbrella of this law. The Gojra, Badami Bagh, Gujranwala incidents, the recent killing of one blasphemy accused and wounding of another in Adiala Jail and many other similar events are blatantly scars on the face of our history and no one accused of blasphemy, rightly or wrongly, is safe. It is more than shameful for this increasingly intolerant and bigoted society that the perpetrators behind such heinous crimes are treated as heroes while the principles of justice stand paralysed. Parliament needs to take steps to save society from an incremental breakdown of justice because of the blasphemy law while providing safeguards for the falsely accused, whose number is growing, to our permanent shame and ignominy. *