A Judicial Murder???
History has given its verdict that the execution of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a “judicial murder”. Even his worst opponents have admitted that supporting the execution was a mistake. Now history cannot be written on its own terms, as we often do this. The testimony also came from inside that the decision was given under pressure. Now the judiciary is testing that if it was like that, then the murderer will have to be called a murderer.Years have passed, now neither Bhutto is alive, nor General Zia, nor the controversial judiciary, nor those who commit injustice in the name of justice, it is only certain that the judicial killing may require the approval of today’s Supreme Court. Even after that, justice was not done with the future Prime Ministers, nor was the Supreme Court changed, the need for theory is still alive today, but there is some hope from the current Supreme Judiciary that the direction may be corrected. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?
By the way, this story of Bhutto’s judicial murder starts from July 5, 1977, when it was promised elections in 90 days, then it was realized that his popularity had reached its peak after being removed from power in an unconstitutional manner, and when the elections were held, PPP will come back to power, so not only the election was postponed, but the power grabbers also decided that his survival meant their death. That is why the term came out that “the grave is one and the people are two” and thus a conspiracy was prepared to remove it from the path. Obviously, if the punishment was given by a military court, the anger would have been on one side, so the search for a team of favorite judges began and this work was done very meticulously, in which the name of the most controversial lawyer and attorney general in the history of our lawyers, Sharifuddin Pirzada, was apparently chosen, is significant.
But the then Chief Justice of Lahore High Court Maulvi Mushtaq Ahmed was also in the forefront and these were the two people who prepared a plan to seat an ad hoc judge, Justice Naseem Hasan Shah, as the 9th judge in the bench in case of not finding the judges of his choice. In which it is seen that the will and consent of the then Chief Justice Anwar ul Haq was also included to some extent.
Salutations to senior journalist and our colleague Iftikhar Ahmed who exposed this conspiracy for the first time by getting Naseem Hasan Shah to confess in an interview on TV that he gave the decision under pressure. Later, the judge added some “if buts” in his book, but this incident is enough to prove the judicial murder, why this most important case was put on trial.
He himself writes, “This is a reminder of an evening in April 1978. I was getting ready to attend a function when I was informed that Justice Maulvi Mushtaq and Sharifuddin Pirzada were waiting for me in the guest room.” After the traditional greetings, when I tried to know the purpose of coming, he said, “We know that you are not part of the bench that will hear the appeal against Bhutto’s execution.”I said, I am an ad hoc judge, how can I be a part of this important case, others are parties in this case, you should not have come here. What game has been played in the name of justice in this country, from Justice Munir till today, the civilians were punished and the dictators were rewarded.
Justice Mushtaq was angry with Bhutto to the point of hatred, so instead of saying not before me against the traditional and moral code, he himself formed a bench of his choice headed by himself before going to the sessions court in this 1975 fir and hanged Bhutto. If you listen to the account of this hearing, you can imagine how defamatory the honorable judge’s behavior was towards Bhutto.
However, when the Supreme Court formed a 9-member bench, Justice Naseem Hasan Shah was included as the ninth judge. When the hearing of the appeal started, after some time one of the members, Justice Qaiser Mehmood of Peshawar, about whom Justice Shah himself writes, was in favor of accepting Bhutto’s appeal, retired at the age of 65. Now the bench was reduced to 8 members but not broken. Then another judge who had the same idea, Justice Waheeduddin Ahmed, fell ill and left the bench. Still the bench was not broken, the hearing was conducted by 7 judges and Naseem Hasan Shah was the 7th judge. Now, three judges, Chief Justice Anwarul Haque, Justice Karam Ali Chauhan and Justice M Ikram, all three of whom coincidentally belonged to Punjab, wrote the decision to reject the appeal, while Justice Durab Patel and Justice M Haleem belonged to Sindh and Justice Safdar Shah. belonged to Peshawar. All three gave a decision in favor of accepting the appeal.
Now the ball was back in the court of Punjab and Justice Naseem Hasan Shah reminded Justice Muneer in another way. Even at that time, the Federal Court of Sindh had given a decision in favor of the Speaker of the National Assembly Maulvi Tamizuddin, which was changed under the doctrine of necessity. In the Bhutto case, pressure was put on Naseem Hasan Shah and he rejected the appeal of execution and thus the saga of the court’s wrath ended.
Bhutto was to be hanged, so he was given it. History wanted to keep him alive, so he called the hanging a “judicial murder”. We will wait for the decision of today’s judiciary. Most of the characters are no longer in this world, but these 44 years have left Pakistan’s politics and the state in a dead end. . The US threatened to make it a “lesson” but it refused to give up its nuclear program. A dictator, drunk on power, did what he wanted with the third world neutral movement and the one who played an important role in uniting and strengthening the Islamic and Arab worlds.
The talk is over. The characters of the judiciary, the character of the dictator but some of the characters were allegedly from his own party, this is the short story of the “judicial murder” of a prime minister. Today everyone remembers April 4 but how many remember August 17. History has its own decisions, judiciary has its own.