Pakistan Supreme Court Acquits Two Brothers After 20 Years in Blasphemy Case

Pakistan's Supreme Court has acquitted two brothers who spent about 20 years in prison on blasphemy charges, setting aside death sentences that had been upheld by the Lahore High Court more than a decade ago. Liaqat Ali and Umar Draz walked free after the court ruled on Saturday, 7 November 2026, that psychiatric evidence raised reasonable doubt about whether they were criminally responsible for the alleged offence. Both men had lived under a death sentence for most of their adult lives.

The case began in 2006 with a marital dispute. According to the complaint, Umar Draz began making explicit blasphemous statements, and the dispute with his wife ended in divorce on 13 March 2006. Draz expressly affirmed in writing his conversion from Islam in the divorce papers.

During the return of his former wife's dowry articles, a written document authored by his brother Liaqat Ali was recovered, and it also contained blasphemous assertions.

On 18 March 2006, the complainant and witnesses confronted the brothers over the alleged material. Both men acknowledged the contents of the documents and said they were willing to repeat their assertions before any forum. Nine days later, on 27 March 2006, a sessions judge in Jhang convicted both brothers under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, sentenced them to death, and fined each of them Rs500,000, with five years of rigorous imprisonment in default.

Twenty years is a long time to wait for a court to ask whether a man understood what he was doing. The brothers' appeals reached the Supreme Court as Criminal Appeal No. 96 of 2020, after the Lahore High Court dismissed their appeals and upheld the convictions on 17 September 2015.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Yahya Afridi, with Justices Shakeel Ahmad and Ishtiaq Ibrahim, heard the appeals. The main judgment was authored by Justice Ibrahim. Before the Supreme Court, the brothers' counsel confined his submissions to one plea: mental unsoundness, arguing that the men lacked the requisite guilty mind at the time of the alleged offence.

The court examined three psychiatric assesments, and they told three different stories. An initial three-member medical board at DHQ Hospital in Faisalabad found both men mentally sound in 2007. But an eight-member Board of Certification diagnosed them in 2023 with bipolar affective disorder with psychotic symptoms.

Then a nine-member Board of Certification in September 2025 concluded that both brothers were suffering from bipolar disorder in a current manic episode, a chronic illness most likely permanent in acute cases, leaving them without insight into their acts.

The court said the unanimous opinions of the specialist boards, made up of senior professors of psychiatry, carried greater weight than the early assessment by a board with only one psychiatrist. It also noted that bipolar disorder was episodic and had a genetic component, and that both brothers had been independently diagnosed with the same condition.

"The appellants have spent around 20 years behind bars. In the light of the opinion of medical board which raises doubts regarding the culpability of the appellants, the benefit of doubt cannot be withheld from the appellants," the judgment said. The court ordered their release unless they were required in another case.

Justice Shakeel Ahmad agreed with the acquittal but added a careful note of his own. He cautioned that a psychiatric diagnosis alone did not satisfy the requirements of Section 84 of the Penal Code, which deals with criminal responsibility where unsoundness of mind prevents a person from knowing the nature of an act or that it is wrong. He drew a line between medical insanity and legal insanity, and said legal accountability had to be balanced with humanity, because true justice also included mercy when the law recognised a lack of mental capacity.

While acquitting the brothers, the court also expected the executive director of the Punjab Institute of Mental Health in Lahore to make sure their medical treatment was not discontinued.

Twenty years behind bars changes a man, and no court order can hand those years back. But mercy arrived in the end, through doctors who kept examining, lawyers who kept appealing, and judges who were willing to weigh new evidence against an old sentence. Hope, in this case, wore a white coat and carried a medical file, and it never stopped knocking on the court's door.

Pakistan Blasphemy Law: Why Section 295-C Cases Take So Long

Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code criminalises insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad and carries the death penalty. Cases under the law are notoriously slow, and defendants often spend years, sometimes decades, in prison while appeals crawl through the courts. The brothers' case took twenty years from conviction to acquittal, and five of those years passed after their appeal reached the Supreme Court.

The judgment does not change the law itself. It shows a court weighing medical evidence on its own terms before allowing a death sentence to stand. Human rights advocates confirmed the acquittal.

The pressure on Christians in Pakistan takes many forms. In China, a house church pastor was arrested on fraud charges after a 100-officer raid, as reported in China Arrests Beijing House Church Pastor Edward Cui After 100-Officer Raid.

In Nigeria, gunmen struck two villages in Plateau State and killed five Christians, as reported in Latest: 5 Christians Killed in Nigeria Plateau Attacks as Gunmen Strike Two Villages. And in Kenya, Al-Shabab gunmen killed five Christian road workers in an ambush in Mandera, as reported in Al-Shabab Kills 5 Christian Road Workers in Mandera Kenya Ambush.

What makes the Pakistan case different is the ending. Most blasphemy cases in Pakistan end in conviction, or in violence outside the courtroom. This one ended with two men walking out of prison alive, because a court decided that doubt, honestly examined, was enough.

What Happens Next for Liaqat Ali and Umar Draz

The brothers are free unless they are required in another case, and the court has asked the Punjab Institute of Mental Health to ensure their treatment continues. That detail matters. Bipolar disorder in a manic episode does not end with a verdict, and the court recognised that the men need care as much as they needed justice.

Their case also leaves a question hanging over every similar file in Pakistan's courts. If three specialist boards can change the outcome of a twenty-year-old death sentence, how many other prisoners are waiting for someone to ask the same question about their state of mind?

For now, two brothers are going home after two decades. They left as young men accused of a crime that carries death, and they return as older men carrying a diagnosis and a court order. The years are gone, and no one can give them back.

But the door of the prison is open, and the rest of their lives, whatever remains of them, belongs to them again.