Lahore court acquits man accused of blasphemy, cites unreliable witness testimonies

LAHORE: A sessions court on Monday acquitted a man accused of desecrating the Holy Quran, ruling that the prosecution had completely failed to establish any direct connection between the accused and the alleged act of blasphemy.

Police had registered First Information Report (FIR) No. 701 on April 27, 2024, under Sections 295-A and 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

The complainant claimed that he was standing near Shadman Chowk when he saw a man near an auto-rickshaw who had removed his shoes and placed papers containing sacred verses beneath his feet. He further alleged that more sacred pages were scattered across the road. Police arrived at the scene and nominated the accused in the case.

The trial formally commenced on Jan 16, 2025, during which the accused pleaded not guilty, maintained his innocence and denied being present at the scene.

The additional district and sessions judge announced the verdict after concluding that the prosecution’s case was severely compromised by “unreliable witness testimonies, missing evidence, and unverified digital proof”.

The judge granted the accused the benefit of the doubt as a matter of right and ordered his immediate release.

In his 10-page judgement, the judge observed that the prosecution’s case fell apart primarily because its principal witnesses failed to legally connect the accused to the crime scene.

The judge noted that the complainant, while deposing on oath, narrated the incident in court but completely failed to identify the accused as the individual he claimed to have seen desecrating the pages at the scene.

He added that cross-examination revealed that the complainant had not even drafted the application himself.

Another key private witness testified that he had seen a crowd apprehending a person but also failed to identify the accused in open court as that individual.

The judge further noted that the prosecution decided to give up a secondary eyewitness — a security guard who had allegedly helped apprehend the culprit at the scene.

The judge ruled that withholding such a vital independent witness deprived the case of natural corroboration.

The prosecution had relied heavily on a CD containing CCTV footage obtained from the Punjab Safe Cities Authority to prove the occurrence.

However, the judge found the digital evidence to be legally inadmissible.

He noted that the prosecution never played the video in court, never approached a forensic expert or Punjab Safe Cities Authority official to verify its authenticity, and failed to send the video to a laboratory to rule out tampering.

Citing Supreme Court precedents, the judge ruled that the mere recovery of a CD did not amount to proof of its contents.

The judge added that police claimed the rickshaw found at the scene belonged to the accused, but the investigating officer admitted he had failed to produce or verify any official vehicle registration or ownership documents linking it to the accused.

Furthermore, the judge observed that a forensic report from the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) only confirmed that the torn pages came from the same source, but provided no forensic evidence linking the handling of those papers to the accused.

The judge observed that while the court was deeply mindful of the immense sanctity attached to the Holy Quran, the gravity of an accusation could not override the standard of legal proof.

Citing apex court rulings, including the Asia Bibi case, the judge reiterated that even a single circumstance creating reasonable doubt entitles an accused to an acquittal as a matter of right, not as a concession.

“In the present case, the doubts are not imaginary, artificial or far-fetched. They arise from the prosecution evidence itself,” the judge ruled.

The judge acquitted the accused of all blasphemy charges and directed that the case property — the sacred pages recovered from the scene — be handled and disposed of with due legal reverence. ...