A Pakistani court has dismissed the bail petition of the publisher of the 102-year-old Ahmadiyya publication Al-Fazl who is accused of printing ‘blasphemous and hate material.’
A two-member bench of the Supreme Court (Lahore Registry) headed by Justice Sardar Asif Saeed Khosa dismissed the bail petition of Tahir Mehdi on Tuesday and directed the prosecution to submit challan before the trial court without delay.
The petition said the Lahore police had registered a baseless case against petitioner Mr. Mehdi on the allegations of publishing “blasphemous and hate material.”
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Advocate Abid Hassan pleaded that his client did not publish any objectionable material in his monthly magazine. “On the pressure of local clerics, the police included terrorism clauses in the FIR, which is against the law,” he said.
Mr. Mehdi has been behind the bars for the last two years and eight months when police arrested him on the instigation of some local clerics in Milat Park residential area.
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‘Police failed to submit challan’
Mr. Hassan said the police had failed to submit challan before the trial court and therefore the court should release his client on bail. A prosecutor submitted the case record before the bench and said the material recovered from the custody of the petitioner was “highly blasphemous and provocative.”
He said Mr. Mehdi had a history of blasphemy cases registered against him by different people. If released on bail, Mr. Mehdi would continue to publishing the hate material that could cause religious conflicts in society, the prosecutor argued.
The bench dismissed the bail petition and directed the prosecution to submit challan before the trial court without delay.
1.5 million Ahmadis live there
Pakistan’s Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim but often face persecution. They were declared non-Muslims through a constitutional amendment in 1974. A decade later, they were barred from proselytising or identifying themselves as Muslims. Some 1.5 million Ahmadis live across the country.