Islamabad High Court quashed a case against an Afghan woman for entering Pakistan without a visa and ruled that she could not be tried under the Foreigners Act on account of being a refugee fearing for her life.

“For reasons to be recorded later, this petition is allowed. There is no evidence establishing that the petitioner knowingly and illegally entered into Pakistan instead ofentering Pakistan as a refugee to save her life,” Justice Babar Sattar had ruled in the short order issued earlier.

“The impugned FIR is therefore quashed. The Ministry of Interior will issue an exit permit to the petitioner forthwith.”

The petition was filed by Rahila Azizi, an Afghan woman who worked for the Afghan Police before the Taliban takeover. She escaped to Pakistan after the fall of Kabul and eventually received an refugee status and a humanitarian woman at risk visa from Australia.

However, she was booked under the Foreigner Act for entering Pakistan illegally and sent to jail. The imprisonment prevented her from leaving Pakistan.

In a written order issued on Wednesday, Justice Sattar wrote that the main issue in the case was that UNHCR had recognised the woman to be a refugee two months after the FIR had been issued.

The counsel for the Afghan woman had argued that while the entering Pakistan illegally was a criminal offence that could lead to a prison sentence of upto 10 years. However, the lawyer argued that Azizi could not be arrested under the law since the UNHCR’s certificate had confirmed that she escaped Pakistan to save her life.

Justice Sattar wrote that the law is not meant to keep people in prison for their entire sentence but to turn people back to their country.

“… a purposive interpretation of the Foreigners Act presents it as a statute meant to regulate entry and exit of foreigners and not to punish anyone who manages to escape from their own country to Pakistan to save their lives.”

Justice Sattar wrote that the law is not meant to be a trap for people fleeing as fear for their lives and must be read in context of other articles of the constitution including Articles 4, 9 and 10.

“That Pakistan does not have its own national legal framework for refugees does not mean that anyone seeking refuge out of fear for his/her life or liberty must do so at the cost of being imprisoned for a term prescribed under Section 14(2) of the Foreigners Act.”

The judge also ruled that helping a refugee to get settled in a third country would not ‘burnish’ Pakistan’s credentials, since the country has itself hosted refugees.