Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed and Judge Ali Hameed of the Supreme Court have appealed their respective jail sentences at the High Court.
The Criminal Court issued the jail verdicts against the justices last week, in connection to the Supreme Court's landmark ruling of February 1, which the state has since declared an attempted coup.
Chief Justice Saeed is facing two jail verdicts. The lower court first found him guilty of ordering to shut down the apex court's Government E-letter Management System (GEMS) in the wake of the February 1 ruling, and sentenced him to four months and 24 days for obstruction of state functioning.
The second verdict, also faced by Judge Hameed, is a sentence of one year, seven months and six days after the Criminal Court found the duo guilty of undue influence on the judiciary. The court had declared that evidences presented during the closed trial proved that Saeed and Hameed had been influencing judges of lower courts to manipulate verdicts since the beginning of 2016 until February 1 this year.
Saeed and Hameed filed their appeals last Tuesday. It remains unclear whether the High Court has accepted the cases yet.
Under the Judicature Act, a judge convicted of a criminal offence receives a period of 10 days to appeal their case, while the appellate court is mandated to conclude the appeal process within 30 days.
However, under a recent amendment to the Act, should the High Court uphold the lower court's ruling and find them guilty, Saeed and Hameed would automatically lose their positions as judges. Currently, the judges are on no-pay suspension.
The state has also levied other charges against Saeed and Hameed, including terrorism, bribery, and obstruction of justice. The Criminal Court has yet to conclude these trials.
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