The newly empowered Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) has scheduled a hearing for December 3 to consider a request for an independent investigation into the 2022 killing of journalist Arshad Sharif in Kenya.
Sharif was shot in the head in October 2022 when Kenyan police opened fire on his vehicle. He had left Pakistan in August 2022 after multiple sedition cases were registered against him in various cities.
According to the FCC cause list issued on November 28, notices have been sent to the attorney general, the inspector general of Islamabad Police, the foreign secretary and other respondents for the upcoming hearing. The matter will be taken up by a two-member bench comprising Justices Aamir Farooq and Rozi Khan Barrech, who will review the request for an “independent and transparent investigation” into the killing.
The case was initially taken up suo motu by a six-member Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Aminuddin Khan. After the passage of the 27th Constitutional Amendment and the establishment of the FCC, jurisdiction over constitutional and suo motu matters was transferred to the new court, shifting the case from the Supreme Court to the FCC.
In August last year, then–chief justice Qazi Faez Isa stated that the case had not been fixed before a five-judge larger bench because it did not involve constitutional interpretation. In July 2024, the Supreme Court referred the matter to the three-judge committee formed under the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act, 2023, to re-fix the case before a five-judge bench, a development superseded by the FCC’s assumption of jurisdiction.
