When all the Judges (including Non Punjabi) had rejected the Review petition of Bhutto
بھٹو دی ریوو پیشن نوں پنجابی تے غیر پنجابی سارے 7 ججاں مسترد کیتا سی۔
Some documents and facts related to judicial murder of the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Although someone did it in pressure or not but facts remain facts. In Feb 06, 1979 decision, It was a 4 to 3 verdict but at 24rth March 1979, it was a unanimous decision by all 7 Judges and they rejected the review, It had included all the Punjabi & non Punjabi judges but it was twisted later by various players and some are playing with the fact still today. The case was political but as usual Court decided it on technical basis. Here are facts
DORAB PATEL, J. - Although this review petition has to be dismissed, I would like to make a few observations on the question of sentence. As submitted by Mr. Yahya Bakhtiar, there are judgments in which capital punishment has been imposed only on the persons who have actually participated in the killing of the victim of the offence, and the lesser sentence has been imposed on the person or persons who have instigated or abetted the murder. Similarly there are judgments in which the lesser sentence has been imposed for murder on account of a cleavage of opinion in the Court which heard the appeal. But confining myself only to the reported judgments of this Court in the last three years to which I was a party, this principle was not followed in Aminullah v. The State685 , in Roshan and 4 others v. The State686 , and in Noor Alam v. The State687 . Perhaps because the trend of authority in this Court in the last eight or ten years has been consistently against the proposition advanced by learned counsel, he placed great stress on the unusual cleavage of opinion in the instant case. Be that as it may, learned counsel's main stress was on the fact that even according to the prosecution it was not Mr. Bhutto who had fired the fatal shots at Mr. Kasuri's car and that in any event the victim of the offence was not the person whose murder Mr. Bhutto had planned. But these are circumstances which, according to the settled law, were relevant to a plea for mitigation of sentence, therefore, learned counsel should have referred to them in his arguments before us in the appeal against Mr. Bhutto's conviction, the more so, as the question of sentence is a question in the discretion of the Court. I am also not aware of any case either of this Court or of the High Courts in which counsel for the appellant has, whilst challenging a conviction for murder, not addressed arguments in the alternative on the question of sentence. I, therefore, agree with the view of Akram, J., that the question of sentence cannot be raised in a review petition, and if we were to alter the sentence in this review, we would be unsetting the settled law. But, although we are thus precluded by law from going into the question of sentence, as observed by Akram, J., in the concluding paragraph of his order, the grounds relied upon by Mr. Yahya Bakhtiar for mitigation of sentence are relevant for consideration by the executive authorities in the exercise of their prerogative of clemency. However, Mr. Yahya Bakhtiar's arguments on the question of sentence were without prejudice to his main submission, which was that the majority judgment suffered from errors apparent on the record which had resulted in the dismissal of Mr. Bhutto's appeal. Now learned counsel had addressed us for nearly two weeks on this question, but as he has failed to persuade the Judges, who pronounced the majority judgment of the Court, to revise the finding of guilt of the petitioner, it follows that the review petition must be dismissed. In these circumstances, consistently with judicial dignity and the practice of this Court, I do not think it would be proper for me to make any observation on learned counsel's submissions; and I would dismiss the petition for the reasons given herein. MUHAMMAD HALEEM, J. - For the reasons given by my learned brother Dorab Patel, J., in his separate note, I agree that this petition be dismissed.
G. SAFDAR SHAH, J. - For the reasons given in the order proposed to be delivered by my learned brother, Dorab Petal, J., I agree that this petition be dismissed.
KARAM ELAHEE CHAUHAN, J. - Respectfully agreeing with the judgment of and following the reasons given by my learned brother Muhammad Akram, J., I dismiss this review petition.
NASIM HASSAN SHAH, J. - I respectfully agree with the judgment proposed to be delivered by my learned brother Muhammad Akram, J. and have nothing further to add.
Link of the above material, see at page 984/5
https://bhutto.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Zulfikar-Ali-Bhutto-Trial-Documents.pdf
New York Times reporting 24 March 1979
SENTENCE OF DEATH FOR BHUTTO UPHELD #NewYorkTimes 24 March 1979 when all the 7 judges had rejected his review petition.
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Saturday, March 24 — Pakistan's Supreme Court today rejected an appeal to lift the death sentence against former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The court refused to review its 4‐to‐3 decision of Feb. 6 upholding Mr. Bhutto's death sentence and conviction on charges of having ordered the murder of a political opponent more than four years ago.
Mr. Bhutto. has seven days to file a clemency petition with President Mohammad Zia ul‐Haq, who overthrew Mr. Bhutto in 1977. If he does not make such a plea or if it is unsuccessful, the man who ruled this country for five years could be hanged on 24 hours' notice.
Mr. Bhutto, 51 years old, has instructed his family not to ask for leniency.
In announcing the high court's decision, Chief Justice Anwar ul Haq simply said: “The petition is dismissed.”
World Interest Aroused
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — In a trial that aroused worldwide interest, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and four other men were convicted of murder and sentenced to death last year for the killing of Nawab Mohammed Ahmed Khan, the head of a former ruling family in the defunct princely state of Kasur, now part of Pakistan's Punjab Province. The nawab was fatally wounded by a bullet believed to have been intended for his son, Ahmed Raza Kasuri, a member of Parliament and a critic of the Bhutto Government.
The car in which the two men were riding was ambushed as they were returning from a wedding in Lahore shortly after midnight on Nov. 11, 1974. Mr. Kasuri, who was unhurt in the incident, had survived two previous attempts on his life, presumably by political assassins.
In the trial in the Lahore High Court, a top officer of the Federal Security Force, a now‐disbanded paramilitary unit of Mr. Bhutto's Government, testified that Mr. Bhutto had ordered the killing of Mr. Kasuri.
The former prime minister's plea of innocence in the affair was outweighed, in the court's judgment, by the testimony of members of the security force who became prosecution witnesses in return for immunity in the case.
Upheld in 4‐to‐3 Ruling
The verdict and sentence were upheld by the Supreme Court, after hearings that lasted seven months, in a 4‐to‐3 decision. Three judges were for acquitting Mr. Bhutto and one other defendant, but the court was unanimous in confirming the conviction and death sentence of the other three defendants.
As time began running our for Mr. Bhutto, pleas for clemency poured in from around the world to President Mohammad Zia ul‐Haq. Among those who appealed on Mr. Bhutto's behalf were President Carter, President Leonid I. Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, Chairman Hua Guofeng of China, King Khalid of Saudi Arabia, Pope John Paul H and such organizations as Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists.
General Zia had maintained consistently that he would not interfere with the decision of the courts.
Mr. Bhutto, awaiting the outcome in a death cell of the Rawalpindi jail, rejected the final legal recourse open to him of a personal plea to his successor for clemency. Such a step would be “humiliating,” he said, and he forbade members of his family to exercise their right under the law to make the appeal to General Zia on his behalf.
Mr. Bhutto's wife, Nusrat, and his 25year‐old daughter, Benazir, have been held under house arrest. The two other Bhutto children are out of the country.
It had been expected that many followers of the charismatic Mr. Bhutto, who had headed the Government for more than five years, first as president and then as prime minister, might stage public disturbances. Apparently to forestall such outbreaks, the Government arrested hundreds of key members of Mr. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.
In arguments urging the Supreme Court to accept the petition for a review of the panel's decision upholding Mr. Bhutto's sentence, defense lawyers maintained that the narrow margin of the split verdict should dictate at least a commucation of the death sentence. Legal precedents were cited to cast doubt on the justice of convicting a defendant of murder when he had not been at the scene of the crime.
Judicial Bias Charged
The defense also quoted statements from the bench by Mr. Bhutto's trial judges in an attempt to show that the former Prime Minister had been the victim of judicial bias.
The proceedings revealed murky aspects in the background of the case against Mr. Bhutto. It was noted that General Zia, using his supreme power under martial law, had changed chief justices before the appeal General Zia assumed the office of President upon the resignation of the elected chief executive, Fazal Elahi Chaudhry. .
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Further readings about the same case
