The Supreme Court of Pakistan has acquitted two brothers who spent about 20 years in prison, much of it on death row, after medical boards found they were mentally unsound at the time of the alleged offence. The court set aside their death sentences and gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Liaqat Ali and Umar Draz had been sentenced to death in 2006. Their acquittal was reported on Sunday, 8 November 2026, after a three-judge bench heard their appeals against a Lahore High Court decision that had upheld the convictions.

The case against the brothers

A sessions judge in Jhang convicted both men on 27 March 2006 under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code and sentenced each of them to death. Each was also fined Rs500,000, with five years of rigorous imprisonment in default if the fine went unpaid.

The Lahore High Court upheld the death sentences on 17 September 2015. The brothers then appealed to the Supreme Court, where their counsel argued a single point: that both men were mentally unsound when the offence was said to have taken place, and so lacked the guilty mind the law requires for a conviction.

What the medical boards found

The medical evidence changed over the years, and that change decided the case. A three-member board at DHQ Hospital in Faisalabad found both men mentally sound in 2007. But an eight-member Board of Certification diagnosed them in 2023 with bipolar affective disorder with psychotic symptoms.

A nine-member board then examined them in September 2025 and found both brothers were suffering from bipolar disorder in a current manic episode. It described the illness as long-term and, in acute cases, most likely permanent, leaving them without insight into their acts.

The court said the unanimous view of the specialist boards, made up of senior professors of psychiatry, carried more weight than the early assessment by a board with only one psychiatrist on it. It treated the fact that both brothers, examined separately, received the same diagnosis as compelling scientific corroboration that their mental unsoundness was an inherited, pre-existing illness.

What the court decided

The bench was led by Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi. Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim wrote the main judgment, and Justice Shakeel Ahmad agreed with the acquittal while adding a separate note of his own.

The judgment said the men had spent around 20 years behind bars and that, in light of the medical boards' opinion raising doubts about their culpability, the benefit of the doubt could not be withheld from them. The court acquitted both brothers and directed the Punjab Institute of Mental Health to make sure their medical treatment continues.

Why the case matters

The ruling does not change the law. It shows the court weighing medical evidence on its own terms before allowing a death sentence to stand, and it underlines how long death-row appeals can take in Pakistan: two decades passed between the trial court's verdict and the final acquittal.

It is the second such acquittal in about a year. In 2025 the Supreme Court acquitted Anwar Kenneth, who had spent more than two decades on death row, after a medical board diagnosed him with bipolar affective disorder. In that case too, the court ordered his immediate release and directed that his psychiatric treatment continue.