Recently, the legal fraternity of Pakistan has been under fire for their hooliganism at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. While this truly is something the public should protest against, there is one group among lawyers that has been doing even worse in the shadows but has escaped all public judgment. Known as the “Khatm-e-Nubuwwat Lawyers’ Forum” and founded in 2001, they have been prosecuting anyone who is accused of blasphemy regardless if those accusations have any grounds. This has led to innocent people spending their lives behind bars resulting in gross injustice.
This is quite evident from its founder, Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry who was also the defense lawyer of Mumtaz Qadri – the killer of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer. Despite there being no substantial evidence against the slain governor nor against Asia Bibi who he was defending, Ghulam supported Mumtaz terming his actions as justified. Additionally, in an interview with Unreported World back in April 2019, Ghulam quoted the case of a Christian man named Sawan Masih. He stated how this man’s house was torched but despite that, no one did anything to Sawan because there was a case against him in the courts and hence by that virtue, this law is actually a blessing helping protect people allowing them to be tried through a fair process. Let that sink in, the torching of a man’s house carries no significance for him if they happen to be accused of blasphemy – the real life definition of hating the sinner instead of the sin only.
However, this is untrue on all accounts even if we somehow believed his notion of this law being a savior. In actuality, once the case does reach the courts, they ensure that the defendant does not have a fair trial. As an example, one defense lawyer named Saif-ul-Malook states how the group tries to intimidate them by bringing their supporters in court and in one instance, “a crowd of lawyers left him barely any space to stand and shouted slogans when he spoke to the judge to present his case.”
Although Ghulam has denied any such acts to have taken place, this hasn’t stopped the truth from coming out as families of defendants have also spoken out.
Moreover, the organization in itself has been responsible for the growth of blasphemy cases in Pakistan, a dark revelation in itself. According to a Reuters report in 2016,
“Since Khatm-e-Nubuwwat was founded 15 years ago, the number of criminal blasphemy cases filed in Punjab, the group’s home base and Pakistan’s most populous province, had tripled to 336 by 2014, according to police figures.”
The group has also grown up to 700 lawyers over the years who offer to take on cases for free against alleged blasphemers. God forbid if someone does not make a complaint against the alleged, you will have these black suits arrive with an entourage to encourage you to make one. Encouragement, by all means, is, of course, subjective in its interpretation. Conventional wisdom though suggests it would be coercion in this case.
In summation, the most disappointing aspect of this entire episode is the lack of government effort to close down such extremist organizations. This can be partly attributed to politicians using the religious lot as a vote bank but that doesn’t mean that we the people, cannot voice our opinions. It is time that in light of all that has happened over the decades and the injustices that victims have faced, we start calling out such groups, especially at a time when the legal fraternity is already under increasing pressure giving us a headstart. We should demand all legal associations and bar councils to disbar and isolate such members because that’s where we can hit them the hardest – at the very profession they employ to carry out these extremist agendas.
