Supreme Court of Pakistan has acquitted two brothers who spent nearly 20 years in prison, much of it on death row, after ruling that medical evidence of bipolar disorder raised real doubt about whether they were of sound mind when the alleged offence took place. The blasphemy case acquittal, reported by Independent Pakistan and corroborated by PakInsightHub, ends one of the longest-running cases of its kind in the country’s courts.
Liaqat Ali and Umar Draz had their convictions under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code set aside on Saturday by a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Yahya Afridi. The bench, which also included Justices Shakeel Ahmad and Ishtiaq Ibrahim, was hearing the brothers’ appeals against a Lahore High Court decision of 17 September 2015 that had upheld their death sentences.
Twenty years behind bars
The brothers were convicted by a sessions judge in Jhang on 27 March 2006. Each was sentenced to death and fined Rs500,000, with five years of rigorous imprisonment if the fine went unpaid. They have spent about two decades in custody since.
According to the complaint, the case began with a marital dispute. Draz’s former wife alleged that he had begun making blasphemous statements, and the couple divorced on 13 March 2006. The complaint says Draz affirmed in writing in the divorce papers that he had left Islam, and that a document written by Ali, containing further blasphemous assertions, was found when his brother’s former wife’s dowry items were returned. On 18 March 2006, the complainant and witnesses confronted the brothers, who allegedly acknowledged the contents and said they were willing to repeat them before any forum.
Before the Supreme Court, the brothers’ counsel confined his arguments to a single point: mental unsoundness. He said the pair lacked the necessary mens rea — the guilty mind — at the time of the alleged offence.
Three medical boards, three different answers
The court examined three psychiatric assessments carried out over nearly two decades. A three-member medical board at the District Headquarters Hospital in Faisalabad found both men mentally sound in 2007. An eight-member Board of Certification reached a different conclusion in 2023, diagnosing bipolar affective disorder with psychotic symptoms. Then, in September 2025, a nine-member board found that both men were suffering from bipolar disorder in a current manic episode — a chronic illness, most likely permanent in acute cases, that left them without insight into their acts.
The judges gave greater weight to the later boards, whose unanimous findings came from senior professors of psychiatry. The 2007 board, they noted, had included only one psychiatrist. Three members of the Board of Certification appeared before the bench on 6 July and explained how the illness works, describing bipolar affective disorder as an episodic illness, with symptom-free intervals that vary in length from patient to patient.
In the seven-page judgment written by Justice Ibrahim, the court said the reports established that the appellants suffer from bipolar disorder, which can deprive a person of the ability to understand the nature or lawfulness of their actions during active manic episodes. Because the illness is episodic, the verdict said, it was “highly probable” that the brothers were in an active manic episode when the alleged offence took place.
The court also pointed to undisputed evidence that bipolar disorder has a strong genetic component. That both brothers were independently diagnosed with the same condition, it said, “cannot be dismissed as a mere quirk of fate or post-trial coincidence”. The shared diagnosis, the judgment said, provided “compelling scientific corroboration” that their illness was inherited and predated the alleged offence.
A separate note on medical and legal insanity
Justice Ahmad agreed with the acquittal but added a separate note. He warned that a psychiatric diagnosis alone does not meet the requirements of Section 84 of the Penal Code, which governs the defence of unsoundness of mind. He distinguished medical insanity from legal insanity: the question, he said, was whether the accused, at the time of the offence, was incapable of knowing the nature of the act or that it was wrong or contrary to law.
Legal accountability, he wrote, must be balanced with humanity, and justice also includes mercy when the law recognises a person’s lack of mental capacity. He said the medical reports, read with the surrounding circumstances, created reasonable doubt, and he referred to Islamic principles of legal capacity and responsibility.
The bench also expressed the expectation that the executive director of the Punjab Institute of Mental Health in Lahore would ensure that the brothers’ treatment is not discontinued.
What the ruling does — and does not — change
The judgment does not change the law itself. Section 295-C still carries a mandatory death penalty, and the court decided this case on the facts before it — the medical evidence and the doubt it created about the brothers’ state of mind.
The ruling came barely a month after the same bench, with Justice Ibrahim writing the judgment, upheld the death sentence of Qaiser Ayub, a Christian man convicted of publishing blasphemous material online, while acquitting his brother Amoon Ayub for lack of evidence in the same decision on 7 October. Lawyers for the Ayub brothers said they would seek a review of that sentence.
Blasphemy accusations in Pakistan are frequently tied to personal or property disputes, and the Supreme Court itself warned in 2014 that many cases stem from such disputes or family vendettas. No death sentence has been carried out under the country’s blasphemy laws to date, although people accused of the offence have been killed by mobs. Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, spent eight years on death row before the Supreme Court acquitted her in 2018.
For Liaqat Ali and Umar Draz, the court’s words were simple: they had spent about 20 years behind bars, and the medical opinion raised doubts about their culpability. In those circumstances, the court said, the benefit of the doubt could not be withheld.
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