Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), has formally requested the Supreme Court of Pakistan to broadcast live the proceedings of a presidential reference that seeks to revisit the murder case of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the PPP founder. The hearing, set to be conducted by a nine-member bench led by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, is scheduled for Tuesday.
The bench includes Justices Sardar Tariq Masood, Mansoor Ali Shah, Yahya Afridi, Aminud Din Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, and Musarrat Hilali, as confirmed by Supreme Court Registrar Jazeela Aslam.
This development follows a presidential reference filed on April 2, 2011, by then-President Asif Ali Zardari, invoking Article 186 of the Constitution of Pakistan. The reference aimed to seek the apex court’s opinion on re-examining the trial of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. The last session addressing this reference occurred on November 11, 2012.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s case dates back to his arrest on September 3, 1977, in connection with the March 1974 murder of Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri, following the imposition of martial law by General Ziaul Haq on July 5, 1977. Bhutto, who served as Pakistan’s president post-Dhaka’s fall in December 1971 and later as prime minister following the 1973 Constitution, faced initial release and subsequent rearrest on the same charges, leading to a trial at the Lahore High Court (LHC).
On March 18, 1978, Bhutto was found guilty and sentenced to death, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court on February 6, 1979, with a narrow 4-3 verdict. The appeal was dismissed on March 24, 1979, and Gen Zia confirmed the death sentence. Bhutto was executed on April 4, 1979, at Rawalpindi Central Jail and buried in Garhi Khuda Baksh.
The PPP, then in power, revisited this case 32 years later in 2011, noting that the Supreme Court’s judgment on Bhutto’s execution had not been cited as a precedent in subsequent cases.
