The Federal Shariat Court has declared as unconstitutional and un-Islamic three sections of the Protection of Women Act 2006, holding that these take away the overriding effects of the Hudood Ordinance 1979.
A three-member FSC bench comprising Chief Justice Agha Rafiq Ahmed Khan, Justice Afzaal Haider and Justice Shahzado Sheikh announced its verdict on Wednesday on identical petitions challenging the act. It declared that sections 11, 28 and 29 incorporated in the Hudood Ordinance during the Musharraf government were in violation of Article 203DD of the Constitution. The court asked the government to take necessary steps to amend the impugned laws in conformity with the Holy Quran and Sunnah.
The FSC also held that Section 25 of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 was against Article 203DD of the Constitution. The court directed its office to send copies of the judgment to the federal government and provincial and Islamabad high courts for information, necessary action and compliance.
“All those offences whose punishments are either prescribed or left undermined, relating to acts forbidden or disapproved by the Holy Quran and Sunnah, including all such acts which are akin, auxiliary, analogous or supplementary to or germane with Hudood offences as well as preparation or abetment or attempt to commit such an offence and as such made culpable by legislative instruments would without fail be covered by the meaning and scope of the term Hudood.”, court order said.
“Some portions of sections 48 and 49 of the Control of Narcotic Substances Act 1997 whereby the high courts have been empowered to entertain appeals against the order of a special court consisting of a sessions judge or an additional sessions judge, transfer within its territorial jurisdiction any case from one special court to another special court at any stage of the proceedings, were also violative of the provisions contained in Chapter 3A of Part VII of the Constitution because the offences envisaged by Act XV of 1997 are covered by the term Hudood.” The court consequently declared both the sections as violative of Article 203DD and held that the portion which contained the words high court should be deemed to be substituted by the words FSC in both the sections.
In a statement the commission said that in effect the Hudood Ordinance which had tormented and caused hundreds of innocent women to languish in jails and destroyed their social and family lives was being resurrected by the judgment. It said the verdict negated all positive initiatives taken by the government and took the nation back to square one. The commission appeals to the government to take a firm stand against this “retrogressive judgment” which was only an attempt to use religion for political purposes.
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