The Supreme Court has declined to reduce the death sentence imposed on Muhammad Kamran for the murder of Maimoona Shaheen. A three-member bench dismissed his review petition on 13 October, holding that a woman's decision to reject a marriage proposal cannot excuse her killing or serve as a reason to soften the punishment.
The bench comprised Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar, Justice Salahuddin Panhwar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim. In its judgment, the court said a woman is free to accept or refuse a proposal as she chooses, and that ending her life for that refusal cannot be defended. It called killing a woman for turning a proposal down a grave offence. Marriage, it said, depends on both people agreeing, and no man, family or society may force that choice on her.
What the courts decided
The judgment records the prosecution's account that Kamran shot and killed Maimoona Shaheen at her home after she and her family rejected his proposal. The trial court convicted him under Section 302(b) of the Pakistan Penal Code, the provision used to punish intentional murder, sentenced him to death and ordered compensation. The high court and, after that, the Supreme Court upheld the sentence.
Kamran then filed a review petition. He said he had spent nearly 14 years in prison and asked that the punishment be changed to life imprisonment. The court replied that he had not pointed out any apparent legal error or defect in the earlier judgment that would justify a review, and it dismissed the petition.
Consent, custom and commutation
The judges refused to treat her refusal as provocation. Doing so, they said, would mean accepting that a woman's will is lesser than a man's wishes. Anger, resentment or emotional hurt, they added, cannot support a lighter punishment for murder.
Time already spent in custody was also not enough on its own. The court said death and life imprisonment have different legal consequences. Under the principle of life expectancy, as the judgment explained it, replacing a death sentence with life imprisonment requires at least 25 years in prison, further compelling mitigating circumstances, meaning weighty reasons that cut against the full severity of the crime, and an offence that is not exceptionally grave. Kamran was arrested on 5 September 2012 and had served about 14 years, which the court said made him ineligible for relief under that principle.
The judgment then spoke to attitudes behind violence against women and forced marriage. Consent, it said, cannot be set aside in the name of honour, family tradition, ego or emotion. Referring to ghag, swara and watta satta, the court observed that treating women as commodities is among the causes of such violence. Those names describe customary practices that can place a woman in a marriage arrangement without her free choice.
Islam, the court said, requires a woman's free consent for marriage and recognises her right to choose her spouse. It added that Pakistan is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, known as CEDAW, an international treaty against discrimination based on sex, and is committed under it to that same right. Finding no legally acceptable ground to reduce the punishment, the bench dismissed the review and maintained the death sentence.
Aasan alfaaz mein
Supreme Court ne Muhammad Kamran ki saza kam karne ki darkhwast radd kar di hai. Us par Maimoona Shaheen ka qatl sabit hua tha; prosecution ke mutabiq us ne unhein ghar par goli mari thi jab unhon ne aur un ke ghar walon ne shadi ka rishta mana kar diya. Adalat ne kaha ke larki ka inkar qatl ki wajah nahi, aur taqreeban 14 saal ki qaid saza badalne ke liye kafi nahi. Aam logon ke liye matlab yeh hai ke shadi aurat ki marzi se honi chahiye.
