Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance,1979

The Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979 is one of the Hudood Ordinances promulgated in 1979 to bring Pakistan's criminal law on zina, sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who are not married to each other (Section 4), into line with what the Ordinance's preamble describes as the injunctions of the Quran and Sunnah.

Section 5 defines "zina liable to hadd," the category carrying the Ordinance's maximum, Quranically-prescribed punishments, as zina committed by an adult, sane man or woman with a partner to whom they are not married and do not believe themselves married. Under Section 5(2), a person found guilty of zina liable to hadd who is "muhsan" (defined in Section 2(d), broadly meaning a Muslim adult who has previously had lawful sexual intercourse within a valid marriage) faces stoning to death in public; someone not muhsan faces one hundred stripes of whipping in public. Section 5(3) requires that no such sentence be carried out until it has been confirmed by the appellate court, and that a person sentenced to whipping is held as if simply imprisoned until the whipping sentence is confirmed and carried out.

Section 8 sets out how zina liable to hadd must be proved: either a confession made by the accused before a competent court, or the eyewitness testimony of at least four adult Muslim male witnesses, non-Muslim witnesses being permitted if the accused is non-Muslim, who personally saw the actual act of penetration and whom the court is satisfied are truthful and avoid major sins. Section 9 provides that hadd punishment will not be enforced if the convict retracts a confession, or if enough witnesses withdraw their testimony to drop the eyewitness count below four, before the sentence or the remaining part of it is carried out. Section 17 describes the method of carrying out a stoning-to-death sentence.

Section 20 provides that ordinary Criminal Procedure Code rules apply to cases under the Ordinance, but with amendments: such offences are tried only by a Court of Session, not by a magistrate, and appeals go to the Federal Shariat Court. Section 21 requires the presiding judge to be Muslim, unless the accused is non-Muslim. Section 22 clarifies the Ordinance does not apply to cases or offences that occurred before it came into force.

The extract shows this Ordinance has been very substantially amended since 1979, above all by Act VI of 2006, the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act. That amendment removed the original rape-related provisions, the "Zina-bil-Jabr" offence at Section 6 and related Sections 10-16, 18-19, now shown in the text as omitted, from this Ordinance and relocated rape to the Pakistan Penal Code, and it added Section 5A, which bars converting a rape complaint into a zina or fornication complaint, or vice versa, at any stage. Given how extensively the Ordinance has been cut down and restructured, and how sensitive and consequential its provisions are, readers should treat this summary as a guide to the surviving text only and consult the current official version, and ideally legal advice, for anything beyond general orientation.