Court removes reference under Section 152 of CrPC following FO distancing itself from judge’s remarks
Lawyer and rights activist Imaan Mazari and her husband, lawyer Hadi Ali Chattha. PHOTO: EXPRESS
ISLAMABAD:
An Islamabad high court has overturned part of its judgment in a case posted on social media against rights activist and lawyer Imaan Mazari and her husband, lawyer Hadi Ali Chattha, who referred to certain countries as “terrorist states”, it was reported on Friday.
The two men were convicted in Islamabad last week in a case linked to alleged posts and reposts on X that investigators called “anti-state.” The case was registered in August 2025 by the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016, with allegations that the content was aimed at undermining state institutions and aligning with banned organizations or individuals.
District and Sessions Judge Islamabad Afzal Majoka had observed that the accused had termed Pakistan a “terrorist state” in office, a designation which, according to the order, was officially applied to only four countries: Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Korea, Iran and Syria.
The Foreign Office spokesperson was asked about this observation during his weekly press briefing a day ago and asked what is Pakistan’s political position on the issue, to which he replied: “We have seen the judgment. These are the views of the learned judge. Pakistan, of course, does not subscribe to this view. This type of designation of terrorist states does not exist either in the language of the UN or under international law.”
Subsequently, a judge’s order, dated January 27, was made public today, according to which NCCIA Special Prosecutor Muhammad Usman Rana had filed an application on January 24 for “correction of errors…in which, due to a typographical error, a sentence…had been
written due to a clerical error which is not supported by any statutory provision, judicial precedent, executive notification, international instrument or authoritative reference, so some may be deleted because this sentence is vague and ambiguous.”
The order added that the stenographer had mentioned in the written response that the sentence, along with others, had been deleted during the correction of the judgment but that it had been wrongly included in the judgment at the time of final printing and “that this error on his part is in good faith”.
Citing Article 152 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the order clarifies that clerical or calculation errors in judgments, decrees, orders or errors resulting from any accidental error or omission may at any time be corrected by the court, either on its own initiative or at the request of one of the parties.
Thus, the judge said: “In the present case, the aforesaid sentence has no relevance and has no nexus with the question of determination of the rights of the parties. This sentence is not supported by any statutory provision, judicial precedent, executive notification, international instrument or authoritative reference, therefore, in view of the law stated in the aforesaid estimated citations, this application is granted. Therefore, the sentence is deleted.”
