The government is set to reform the blood money (Diyat) laws that provide for the murderers to escape death punishment if they are pardoned by the victims’ heirs. The Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Legal Affairs Ashtar Ausaf Ali said the Diyat laws were being reformed to confine murderers in jail from seven to 10 years even if they were pardoned by legal heirs of the victims against diyat. He said that murder is an offence against the state. This means that the forgiveness of the victim’s family is irrelevant. The law will prescribe the punishment based on the crime, rather than monetary comfort to the victims.
The government has been careful not to get into the crosshairs of conservative elements that would protest at the changing of a law created from Islamic injunctions, by saying that the basic law will not change. It will be reformed in light of modern facts of increasing income disparities, where the wealth can avoid convictions due to their money.
The Qisas (retribution) and Diyat (blood money) law most famously invoked in the case of Raymond Allen Davis, a CIA contractor who shot two men dead in Lahore in 2011. The diplomatic fiasco only ended when Davis was pardoned in return for Rs 250 million settlements with the men’s families. In 2012, a 20-year-old Karachi student, Shahzeb Khan, was killed by two young men from powerful political families. The victims parents pardoned the killers, causing a national uproar at the injustice of the system tilted towards those who have money.
This is an important and very progressive development. Pakistan’s murder conviction rate dramatically declined from 29 percent in 1990 to just 12 percent in 2000 due to the enactment of the Qisas and Diyat law. The percentage of cases that were cancelled before they were brought to court meanwhile more than doubled in the same period as police took advantage of loopholes in the new law.
Where there is an end to blood money, it is hoped that there will be an end to blood too. This is one less incentive to kill, and takes the security away from the criminal that the can pay himself out of a fix. If properly pursued, such reforms could spell the end for a culture where honour killing, rape, sexual abuse are matters of individual reputation, to be “settled” most often with money or more killing.