The Punjab government told the Supreme Court on Monday, October 20, 2026, that courts should order consecutive sentences for brutal and inhuman crimes, arguing that merging punishments for multiple murders equates the taking of one life with the taking of several. In a formal opinion submitted to a seven-judge bench headed by Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, the province said back-to-back terms in exceptional cases would strengthen public confidence in the criminal justice system and serve the goals of retribution and deterrence.
According to Dawn, the opinion was filed through Punjab's Additional Prosecutor General Tariq Siddiqui and draws on Section 4 of the Punjab Sentencing Act, 2019. The bench will resume hearing the matter, which concerns multiple murders and the duration of life imprisonment, on November 10.
Why Punjab Says Each Life Deserves Its Own Punishment
At the heart of the provincial government's argument lies a simple and moral truth: every human life carries its own weight before the law. Where multiple lives have been unlawfully taken, the opinion states, each offence requires independent penal recognition. Folding all sentences into a single concurrent term would dilute the gravity of additional crimes and place one killing on par with many.
The opinion warned that the criminal justice system cannot adopt a sentencing approach that diminishes the distinct value of each human life or erodes public trust in the administration of justice. It invoked Article 10-A of the Constitution, Section 367 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Section 24-A of the General Clauses Act, 1897, all of which, it argued, require courts to issue reasoned orders when deciding whether sentences run concurrently or consecutively. This discipline, the province said, allows appellate courts to check whether subordinate judges exercised their discretion lawfully.
Punjab did not ask for consecutive terms in every routine case. The opinion recommended reserving them for exceptional circumstances, imposed through a reasoned order, where an offence was committed in a morbid, brutal and inhuman manner that outraged the public conscience. Homicide, kidnapping and abduction, sexual abuse and terrorism were named as categories that could meet this threshold.
The Arithmetic of Life Imprisonment
The opinion laid bare a troubling gap between sentence and reality. Under Section 57 of the Pakistan Penal Code, life imprisonment is calculated as 25 years. Yet executive remissions, the province noted, can cut the actual period served to roughly 15 years.
The legislature has already acknowledged this shortfall. Through the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021, it introduced imprisonment for the remainder of a convict's natural life as a punishment under Sections 375-A (gang rape) and 376 (punishment for rape) of the PPC.
Given this substantial reduction in time actually served, the Punjab prosecution argued, courts must avoid a mechanical or casual approach when ordering sentences to run concurrently. A person convicted of multiple murders should not walk free after roughly 15 years behind bars. Routinely merging sentences, the opinion cautioned, conveys the impression that the justice system draws no distinction between killing one person and killing several.
Precedent and the Proportionality of Punishment
The opinion also placed the matter within the Supreme Court's own jurisprudence. It cited the judgment in the Qaisar Mehmood case, which resolved a long-standing inconsistency between the 1991 Bashir and 2009 Shah Hussain judgments by holding that the latter had been delivered in ignorance of the ratio laid down in the former.
The Qaisar Mehmood judgment held that punishment must be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence. Punjab's submission builds directly on that foundation, insisting that proportionality collapses when a man who has destroyed many families serves the same term as one who has destroyed a single life.
On the question of mercy, the opinion was unflinching. Deterrence and retribution, it maintained, cannot be sacrificed in the name of mercy or expediency. It went further, arguing that sparing an accused the death penalty where the charge has been proved could amount to a grave miscarriage of justice, and that capital punishment should be imposed to restore the supremacy of the law.
A Test for the Court and for the Public Conscience
The hearing on November 10 will determine how trial courts across the country approach multiple offences, and whether the gravity of an offence will formally enter the sentencing calculus. The stakes extend beyond legal doctrine. In a society where faith teaches that justice is sacred and that the blood of the innocent must not be shed with impunity, the question of whether a murderer of many serves the same term as a murderer of one touches the conscience of the nation itself.
The Punjab government's stance reflects a broader insistence that state institutions answer to the people they serve, a principle also visible in the provincial assembly's recent willingness to confront powerful interests, as seen when the