Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday announced the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2010 for blasphemy in a case that has roiled the country.
In the courtroom, it took less a minute for the chief justice, Saqib Nisar, to upturn a series of legal rulings that had kept Bibi on death row for eight years.
In terse remarks to the hushed, packed courtroom, he said that Bibi’s conviction and sentence had been voided.
In a 56-page verdict issued after the ruling, the three-judge bench appeared to side with Bibi’s advocates. They have maintained that the case against the 51-year-old illiterate farmhand was built around a grievance by her fellow Muslim workers, who appeared angry that she might drink from the same vessel as them. She was ordered by a local landlord to bring water to the women on a day while they were picking berries.
Pakistan's Supreme Court has announced the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Catholic woman who was sentenced to death in 2010 for blasphemy. https://t.co/0xhexikXmk
— NPR (@NPR) October 31, 2018