SC to take up presidential reference for ZAB’s murder case
ISLAMABAD: After 2007, the Supreme Court on Wednesday will examine another Presidential reference sent to it for revisiting the murder case of Pakistan’s first democratically elected Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
According to the presidential reference, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s murder was a result of a military coup. The reference also pointed out that former chief justice Naseem Hassan Shah had admitted that the death sentence verdict was given under immense pressure.
The apex Court bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Muhammad Sair Ali and Justice Ghulam Rabbani will deal with one of the decision frequently termed by a large section of political stalwarts, jurists and civil society members as “judicial murder” of one of the most popular leader of the country.
The country’s top Court is set to give its opinion on a presidential reference for revisiting the death sentence passed against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. The Reference was sent to the Supreme Court by President Asif Ali Zardari under Article 186 of the Constitution.
In past, the apex Court had given its opinion over presidential references, the most significant one was on August 4, 2005, when a nine-member bench declared several clauses of Hasba Bill relating to powers of anti-vice ombudsman as unconstitutional.
In January 2007, a five-member bench was constituted on a revised reference moved by the then president Pervez Musharraf against Hasba Bill passed by the provincial assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2006 where the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, a conglomerate of religious parties, was in majority.