show Mushtaq’s fingerprints on the gun, nor was his presence corroborated by any other witnesses despite the arrival of his neighbors at the scene of the incident. The mere fact that a gun was recovered from the house was taken to mean that he, the owner of the house, had employed the gun to shoot at the policemen in the dead of the night. According to Mushtaq, the police asked his mother to pay them a bribe of PKR 800,000 ($8,000) which she refused. As a result of her refusal the police, tortured him severely and eventually settled on a bribe of PKR 7000 ($70). The police also took his wife, mother, four children and brother in law into unlawful custody only to release them following the payment of a bribe of PKR 400,000 ($4,000). Mushtaq was convicted and sentenced to death by the Anti-Terrorism Court on 6 September, 2011. The Lahore High Court dismissed his appeal and confirmed his death sentence on 2 February, 2015. Finally, the Supreme Court accepted his leave to appeal on 3 March, 2017 and the case is currently pending. (iii) JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION OF TERRORISM BY SUPERIOR COURTS Judicial interpretation of the definition of terrorism has served to contribute to its vagueness and disparity of nexus to terrorism and sectarianism. In the case of Kashif Ali v. The Judge, Anti-Terrorism Court, No. II, Lahore (PLD 2016 Supreme Court 951) the Supreme Court stated that the insertion of the term “design” in Section 6 has “widened the scope of the Act and the terms “intention” and “motive” previously used have been substituted with the sole object that if the Act is designed to create a sense of fear or insecurity in society then the Anti-Terrorism Act will have the jurisdiction.” The Court went on to state that the motivation and intent were no longer relevant for cases falling under Section 6(2) and what mattered was the object for which the alleged act was designed. In the words of the Court it was “only required to see whether the terrorist act was such that it would have the tendency to create a sense of fear or insecurity in the minds of the people or any section of the society, as well as the psychological impact created on the mind of the society.” While adjudicating upon the facts presented before it, the Supreme Court ruled that even though a single murder had been committed as a consequence of personal enmity or vendetta it fell within the definition of terrorism under Section 6 by virtue of the fact that it was committed in a public place and on election day when it was busy with voters. The precise location and time was, in the opinion of the court, sufficient evidence that the act was designed to create a feeling of fear in the society.53 In order to establish its interpretation as determinative of all future cases the court unequivocally stated that “we have attempted to generalise the principles which need to be applied by the Courts while deciding the jurisdiction of an Anti-Terrorism Court. We expect that from now onwards the Anti-Terrorism Courts as well as the High Courts would apply the principles set forth herewith.” As stated above, this inordinately wide definition of terrorism has resulted in a large number of conventional criminal offenses to be tried before ATCs. The jurisprudence of the Court continues to develop in a way where all offences that can incite fear in a person are brought within the ambit of terrorism for spreading a “sense of fear and insecurity.” There are several salient examples of this. 53 Para 17 TRIAL AND TERROR 16