Supreme Court upholds death sentence in woman’s …
The Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling concerning women’s rights, declaring that a woman’s right to seek khula (judicial divorce) is a constitutional right and that violence against a woman exercising this right amounts to an attack on the Constitution.
A three-member bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the jail petition filed by convict Waseem Abbas and upheld his death sentence.
Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar authored the four-page detailed judgment.
According to the judgment, women are fully protected under Articles 9, 14 and 25 of the Constitution, which guarantee their security, dignity and equal rights.
The court said that anyone who uses violence against a woman seeking khula would face the full force of the law. It observed that killing a woman for exercising her legal right is an act of brutality and open defiance of the law.
The Supreme Court further ruled that a convict involved in a cold-blooded and planned murder does not deserve any concession.
The judgment also clarified that the testimony of relatives cannot automatically be rejected in cases involving crimes committed within the privacy of a home.
The court said forensic evidence recovered from the crime scene provided conclusive evidence against the accused. The forensic examination established a match between the recovered bullet casings and the pistol linked to the crime.
The Supreme Court found no legal or factual flaw in the decisions of the lower courts and upheld the death sentence awarded to Waseem Abbas.
According to the case record, Waseem Abbas shot and killed his former wife, Shehnaz Bibi, on October 11, 2020.
She had obtained a legal khula decree from a family court before the incident.
The convict allegedly entered the woman’s home and killed her around 48 hours after she obtained the decree.
A trial court subsequently sentenced Abbas to death and awarded him 10 years in prison.
The Lahore High Court later upheld the death sentence.
