Federal minister Ghulam Sarwar slams Ali Muhammad Khan for 'political immaturity'

ISLAMABAD: Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar criticised Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ali Muhammad Khan for introducing a bill calling for public hanging of rapists, saying that the latter was "hungry for publicity" and calling his move "political immaturity". 

The aviation minister was speaking on Geo News' current affairs programme Capital Talk where he said, in response to a question, that Khan had introduced the bill for publicity. "We call this [move to introduce resolution] political immaturity," he said. "Some people are hungry for self-projection. These people are our colleagues and brothers. However, this is against party discipline," he added. 

Ali Muhammad Khan had tabled a resolution in the National Assembly a few days ago which called for public hanging of rapists. The resolution stated: “This house strongly condemns the brutal killing of 8-year-old Iwaz Noor in Nowshera and demands that to stop these shameful and brutal killings of children and give a strong deterrence effect, the killers and rapists should not only be given death penalty by hanging but they should be hanged publicly.”

The resolution was passed by the majority of the Lower House of the parliament. Reacting to the move, Sarwar said it was the standard protocol that whenever a resolution, bill or any legislation was to be presented in the assembly, it was put before the cabinet for discussion. If the cabinet granted approval, the legislation was forwarded to the assembly for further discussion. 

"If someone presented this bill, they did so on their own," he said. "The cabinet or party had no say in this decision." Referring to the resolution, he said that it was "never discussed at any forum" hence the legislation was not in line with the PTI's policy. 

Ali Muhammad Khan, Fawad Chaudhry trade barbs over resolution calling for rapists' public hanging 

Federal Minister of Science and Technology had also criticised Khan for the bill, saying that barbarism was not the answer to crimes. 

"This is just another grave act in line with brutal civilisation practices. Societies act in a balanced way. Barbarism is not the answer to crimes [...] this is another expression of extremism," Chaudhry had tweeted. 

Khan had tweeted in response to Chaudhry's remark, saying that “those calling Islamic punishments as barbaric are themselves cruel.”

Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari also tried to distance the ruling party from the controversial development.

"The resolution passed in NA today on public hangings was across party lines and not a govt-sponsored resolution but an individual act. Many of us oppose it - our MOHR strongly opposes this. Unfortunately I was in a mtg and wasn't able to go to NA," Mazari had tweeted.