SC upholds consecutive life terms in double murder case

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has upheld consecutive life imprisonment terms awarded in a double murder case, ruling that ordering sentences to run concurrently in cases involving multiple killings would lessen the seriousness of additional offences and blur the distinction between taking one life and taking several.

In a judgement authored by Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar, the court said separate killings must receive separate penal recognition. Justice Kakar headed a three-member bench that also included Justice Salahuddin Panhwar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim while hearing a jail petition filed by Qaiser Abbas against a Lahore High Court judgement dated May 11, 2018.

Qaiser Abbas had been convicted in the killings of Faiza Bibi and Abiha on June 23, 2011. According to the prosecution, a quarrel had taken place a month earlier between Faiza Bibi, who was the complainant’s wife, and Shameem Bibi, the petitioner’s sister. The prosecution said the murders were committed because of that grudge.

The case was registered as FIR No 828 dated June 23, 2011, at Allama Iqbal Town police station in Lahore. After a regular trial, the trial court convicted the accused on two counts under Section 302(b) of the Pakistan Penal Code and ordered that the two life sentences be served consecutively.

Petitioner sought concurrent sentences

At the outset of the hearing before the apex court, counsel for the petitioner, Zulfiqar Khalid Maluka, did not challenge the conviction on merits. Instead, he asked the court to modify the sentence so that both life imprisonment terms would run concurrently rather than one after the other.

The defence argued that the petitioner could not be awarded more than one life term in view of the restriction contained in Section 35(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. In support of that contention, counsel relied on the 2009 Shah Hussain case, which, according to the argument, barred sentencing an accused to more than a single life term in one trial under Section 35(a) CrPC.

Additional Prosecutor General Muhammad Jaffer opposed the plea and argued that the murders had been carried out in an exceptionally brutal and heinous manner. He maintained that the facts of the case did not warrant any leniency and that the trial court had rightly ordered consecutive sentences.

SC explains proportionality and precedent

In the seven-page judgement, Justice Kakar said it is a settled principle that punishment must remain proportionate to the gravity of the offence. He stressed that where multiple lives are unlawfully taken, each offence must be acknowledged independently in sentencing.

“To direct all sentences to merge into one concurrent term in cases of multiple murders would substantially dilute the gravity of the additional offences and create an artificial equivalence between the taking of one life and the taking of several,” he said.

The judgement further warned against a sentencing approach that would reduce the value attached to each victim’s life. “In effect, such an approach risks conveying the impermissible impression that an offender may ‘kill two or three, pay for one’. The criminal justice system cannot permit a sentencing structure that diminishes the distinct value of each life.”

The Supreme Court also addressed the question of precedent under Article 189 of the Constitution, observing that all courts are bound by the law declared by the apex court. It noted that the observation made in the Shah Hussain case had been recorded without noticing or overruling an earlier five-member larger bench ruling in Bashir versus state from 1991, which had already settled the interpretation of Section 35 of the CrPC.

The court held that the later observation in Shah Hussain could not override the earlier governing rule laid down in Bashir’s case. It explicitly ruled that Shah Hussain does not constitute a valid precedent and that the matter continues to be governed by Bashir, which held that proviso (a) to Section 35(2) CrPC applies only to courts with limited sentencing powers, namely magistrates and assistant sessions judges, and not to sessions courts.

The Supreme Court ultimately said it found no reason to depart from the concurrent findings of the lower courts and saw no ground to interfere with the impugned verdict.