Judicial Murder of Bhutto: Political Engineering and Bench-Fixing of SC and LHC bench

“Bench Fixing” by CJP Anwarul Haq was responsible for the judicial murder of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1979.

Why Bhutto is alive? Bhutto is alive because of the political engineering and “bench-fixing” that led to the (1) removal of PMs, (2) violation of the constitution and law, and (3) manipulation of judicial benches is alive and kicking in Pakistan as it happened with ZAB during 1977-99 leading to the execution of Bhutto on 4th April 1979, 40 years ago. DoN (Doctrine of Necessity) dictators in cahoot with weak and spineless judges continue to play the charade since the 1950s to usurp power and to serve their vested interests through politically engineered premature terminations of 16 civilian prime ministers, which also includes the judicial murder of ZAB (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto).

DoN (Doctrine of Necessity) godfather Dictator Gen Zia usurps power on July 5,1977: He proclaims martial law, violates and shreds the constitution, imprisons ZAB using the doctrine of necessity, and makes a travesty of law and justice. He then appeases the judges by appointing them as the provincial chief justices as ceremonial governors of their provinces. He then starts to mutilate the constitution by adding and removing clauses at will. Using such alterations, he removes two clauses of the constitution which enabled him to remove the incumbent CJP Justice Yaqub. He then replaces Justice Yaqub with Justice Anwarul Haq who harbored a grudge against Bhutto because he had superseded him with Justice Yaqub when he was elevated as CJP. He then installed Molvi Mushtaq as Chief Justice Lahore High Court. Interestingly enough he too harbored a grudge against Bhutto. 

General Zia then went on to politically engineer the Lahore High Court bench and Supreme Court bench with judges of his choice. In doing so he excluded the independent-minded judges from the benches. He removed the judges whom he feared were moving towards an independent view as ascertained from their remarks. The SC bench of 9 hearing Bhutto’s case was then artificially reduced to 7 judges. ZAB was hanged by a 4-3 decision with 4 judges from Punjab in favor of hanging against 3 judges from minority provinces who were not in favor. The agreed-upon judgment drafted by judges was changed, records tampered, witnesses’ statements and evidence were altered, ignored,… .
A fit case to be labeled as judicial murder with a notorious judgment that no one has cited since or has ever been used as a precedent in any court of law…

[Source: See Hamid Khan’s “A History of the Judiciary in Pakistan”, OUP, 2016 for details of each of these points.]

See Also: 

• DoN godfathers Bench-Fixing and Political Engineering of the SC Bench to Obtain Doctrine of Necessity Judgement

This is the story of mutilation of the constitution and political engineering of supreme court benches which has been repeated each time people’s rights were trampled in the removal of their representatives. Each such removal has simply served the neocolonialism interests, and has plunged Pakistan from one emergency to another, and has kept Pakistan perpetually in the emergency of an ICU. It has effectively terminated and neutered anyone who has worked for people fought for their rights, worked for the economy, and/or nuclear program. ZAB is a symbol, metaphor, and a classic case of how this political engineering happens in Pakistan, and has been sustained starting from 1951 termination of Liaquat Ali Khan till the latest termination of Nawaz Sharif in August 2017, and the bench fixing over the last 4 years.

See Also: