An anti-terrorism court in Lahore has once again split its verdict in a case tied to the May 9, 2023 riots, convicting four senior leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf while acquitting the party’s vice chairman, Shah Mahmood Qureshi. The ruling, delivered by ATC Judge Manzar Ali Gill at Kot Lakhpat Jail, sentenced Dr Yasmin Rashid, Mian Mahmood ur Rasheed, Ejaz Chaudhry and Umar Sarfraz Cheema to ten years each in prison in the Mughalpura police vehicles arson case. Qureshi, a former foreign minister, walked free from this particular charge.

The case is one of dozens registered after the countrywide unrest that followed Imran Khan’s arrest in May 2023, when supporters of the former prime minister stormed public and military installations, including the Corps Commander House in Lahore. Government and military buildings, police vehicles and other public property were set alight in cities across Punjab, prompting a wave of prosecutions under anti-terrorism laws.

For Dr Yasmin Rashid, a 72-year-old former Punjab health minister and cancer survivor, the verdict marks yet another conviction in a legal saga that has stretched across nearly two years of trials. She has now been sentenced in multiple separate May 9 cases, with combined sentences for PTI leaders across all the arson and vandalism prosecutions reportedly exceeding two centuries when added together, a figure the party has repeatedly cited as evidence of what it calls a coordinated campaign of legal pressure rather than ordinary criminal accountability.

Qureshi’s acquittal in this case follows a pattern seen in several other May 9 verdicts, where courts have accepted his defence while convicting his co-accused on the same facts. PTI leaders have argued this inconsistency across cases undermines confidence in the process, though the courts have maintained that each case rests on its own evidentiary record, including witness testimony and challans filed separately by different police stations.

The federal government and the ruling coalition have consistently rejected accusations of political persecution, maintaining that the May 9 prosecutions are grounded in specific criminal acts of arson and property destruction rather than in political affiliation. Officials have pointed to the scale of physical damage recorded that day, including attacks on sensitive military sites, as justification for pursuing the cases under anti-terrorism statutes rather than ordinary criminal law.

PTI’s legal team has signalled it will challenge the latest sentences in the Lahore High Court, a route the party has pursued with limited success in earlier May 9 cases. Party leaders have also renewed calls for what they describe as a judicial review of the entire body of May 9 prosecutions, arguing that repeated convictions of the same defendants across near-identical incidents raise questions about proportionality in sentencing.

The verdict lands at a politically sensitive moment, with campaigning for the July 27 Azad Jammu and Kashmir elections in full swing and PTI largely absent from that contest after again failing to secure an election symbol for the AJK Legislative Assembly polls. Party insiders say the continuing convictions of senior leaders have complicated efforts to project organisational strength beyond Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where PTI still governs.

Legal observers following the May 9 cases note that the courts have now handed down convictions and acquittals in a mixed pattern across dozens of separate trials, with some defendants convicted in one case and cleared in another arising from the same day’s events. This has left PTI’s central leadership facing a long and layered appeals process even as the party continues to describe Imran Khan’s continued imprisonment, now well into its third year, as the root cause of the broader standoff between the party and the state.

Compiled by the Weekly PK Staff Desk.