Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Monday requested the Supreme Court to live telecast the hearing of a presidential reference revisiting the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto murder case.
A nine-member larger bench led by CJP Qazi Faez Isa will take up the matter tomorrow ( Tuesday).
“The applicant wants the hearing of this case to be live or on air,” said the application filed by Bilawal.
According to Supreme Court Registrar Jazeela Aslam, the members of the bench included Justice Sardar Tariq Masood, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Yahya Afridi, Justice Aminud Din Khan, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi and Justice Musarrat Hilali.
On April 2, 2011, then-president Asif Ali Zardari approached the apex court through a presidential reference under Article 186 of the Constitution of Pakistan to seek its opinion on revisiting the trial of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) founder.
The last hearing of the reference took place on November 11, 2012.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who took over as president of Pakistan immediately after the fall of Dhaka in December 1971, and later became the prime minister after the 1973 Constitution, was removed from the government through the martial law imposed on July 5, 1977, led by General Ziaul Haq.
On September 3, he was arrested in the case of the March 1974 murder of Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri.
He was released 10 days later after a court found the charges against him “contradictory and incomplete”. He was rearrested on the same charges and arraigned before the Lahore High Court (LHC).
On March 18, 1978, Bhutto was declared guilty of the murder and was sentenced to death. The decision was challenged in the Supreme Court and on February 6, 1979, the Supreme Court voted 4-3 to issue a guilty verdict and upheld the high court decision.
On March 24, 1979, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and Gen Zia upheld the death sentence. Bhutto was hanged at the Rawalpindi Central Jail on April 4, 1979, and was buried at his family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Baksh.
On April 2, 2011, 32 years after Bhutto’s trial and execution, the PPP, then the ruling party, filed the reference for reopening of Bhutto’s trial. It is important to mention that the apex court judgment on the hanging of Bhutto has never been referred to as a precedent by the judges in any case.
