SC upholds consecutive life terms in multiple murder cases

“ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has affirmed that imposing concurrent sentences in cases involving multiple murders substantially diminishes the seriousness of additional offences and artificially equates the taking of one life with the taking of several. “To direct all sentences to merge into one concurrent term in cases of multiple murders would substantially dilute the gravity of the additional offences and create an artificial equivalence between the taking of one life and the taking of several,” observed Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar in a judgement he authored. Justice Kakar, who headed a three-judge SC bench comprising Justice Salahuddin Panhwar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, heard a jail petition filed by Qaiser Abbas against a May 11, 2018, judgement of the Lahore High Court. Qaiser Abbas was convicted of killing Faiza Bibi and Abiha on June 23, 2011. The prosecution stated a quarrel had taken place a month earlier between the deceased, Faiza Bibi, the complainant’s wife, and Shameem Bibi, the petitioner’s sister. Owing to this grudge, the victims were murdered. Rules concurrent sentences in multiple murders undermine gravity of crimes Following these allegations, Qaiser Abbas was arrested in the case (FIR828, dated June 23, 2011) registered at Allama Iqbal Town police station, Lahore. After a regular trial, the trial court convicted him on two counts under Section 302(b) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and ordered the two life imprisonment sentences to run consecutively. At the outset of the hearing before the SC, Zulfiqar Khalid Maluka, representing the petitioner, said he was not contesting the conviction on merit. Instead, the petitioner sought modification of the sentence so that the two life imprisonment terms would run concurrently rather than consecutively. The counsel argued that the petitioner could not be sentenced to more than one life term in light of the bar contained in Section 35(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). In support of his argument, he cited the 2009 Shah Hussain case, which bars sentencing an accused to more than a single life term in one trial under Section 35(a) CrPC. Conversely, Additional Prosecutor General Muhammad Jaffer vehemently opposed the plea, arguing that the murders had been committed in the most brutal, savage and heinous manner possible. Therefore, he argued, the circumstances did not justify any leniency and the trial court’s decision to order consecutive sentences was fully justified. In his seven-page judgement, Justice Kakar explained it is firmly accepted that punishment must remain proportionate to the seriousness of the offence. Proportionality requires that where multiple lives are unlawfully taken, each offence must receive independent penal recognition, he emphasised. “In effect, such an approach risks conveying the impermissible impression that an offender may ‘kill two or three, pay for one’. The criminal justice system cannot permit a sentencing structure that diminishes the distinct value of each life,” the judgement observed. The SC clarified that the doctrine of precedent under Article 189 of the Constitution requires all courts to adhere to the law laid down by the SC. However, it noted that the observation in the Shah Hussain case was made without noticing or overruling an earlier five-member larger bench ruling in the 1991 Bashir versus state case, which had already settled the interpretation of CrPC’s Section 35. Thus, the judgment observed, the later observation in the Shah Hussain case, having been made without considering the earlier governing rule declared in Bashir’s case, could not displace it. The SC explicitly ruled that the Shah Hussain case does not constitute a valid precedent and that the field continues to be governed by the Bashir case, which holds that proviso (a) to Section 35(2), CrPC, applies only to courts of limited sentencing jurisdiction, magistrates and assistant sessions judges, and not to sessions courts. Eventually, the SC held that it could not differ from the concurrent findings recorded by the courts below and found no ground to interfere in the impugned verdict. Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2026

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