Two brothers from Jhang who spent about twenty years in prison under a death sentence have been acquitted by the Supreme Court, which ruled that their mental illness raised serious doubt about whether they could be held criminally responsible for the offence they were accused of.
A three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi, set aside the death sentences and acquitted Liaqat Ali and Umar Draz. The seven-page judgment was written by Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, while Justice Shakeel Ahmad agreed with the acquittal and recorded a separate additional opinion.
The case began in March 2006, when a first information report was registered under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code on a complaint filed by Hafiz Ghulam Hussain, the administrator of Jamia Usmania Abu Bakar. The two brothers have been in custody since then. An additional district and sessions judge in Jhang sentenced them to death on 27 March 2009 and fined each of them Rs500,000. Their appeals were dismissed by the Lahore High Court in September 2015, which left the death sentences in place, and the case then came before the Supreme Court.
The turning point in the appeals was medical evidence about the brothers’ mental health. A hospital board in Faisalabad had found both men mentally sound in 2007. But later assessments reached a different conclusion. An eight-member Board of Certification reported on 31 August 2023, and a nine-member board reported on 18 September 2025, that both brothers suffer from bipolar disorder. The Supreme Court’s judgment records that three senior members of the board appeared before the bench on 6 July and explained the nature of the illness, submitting a detailed report.
The court observed that bipolar disorder is an episodic illness, with long stretches in which a person shows no symptoms, interrupted by episodes of illness. Because of that pattern, the judges found it highly probable that the brothers were in an active manic episode when the alleged offence took place. During such episodes, the judgment said, a person can lose the ability to understand the nature or the lawfulness of their actions.
The fact that both brothers, independently examined, were found to have the same condition carried weight with the court. The judgment said this could not be dismissed as coincidence, and that the strong genetic element in bipolar disorder provided scientific support for the conclusion that their illness was inherited and existed before the alleged offence. With the medical opinion casting doubt on their culpability, the court held that the benefit of the doubt could not be withheld after nearly twenty years behind bars.
The bench also directed that the brothers’ medical treatment should continue, expecting the executive director of the Punjab Institute of Mental Health to ensure it is not stopped.
The acquittal closes one of the longest-running cases to come out of a Jhang trial court, and it rests entirely on the medical record rather than on any re-examination of the original allegations. For the two brothers, it ends two decades in custody that began when they were taken into custody in 2006.
Source: The Express Tribune, “SC acquits mentally unsound blasphemy convicts”, published 8 November 2026; Dawn, “Pakistan Supreme Court acquits brothers after 20 years in prison”, published 8 November 2026.
