Pakistan Supreme Court on Wednesday in Islamabad stayed action on the execution of a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy, in a high-profile case linked to the assassination of a governor in 2011.

Aasia Bibi, a mother of five, was arrested in 2009 after she allegedly made blasphemous remarks during an argument with Muslim women while working on a farmland and was handed a death sentence a year later.

Saiful Maluk, her lawyer, said the Supreme Court judges in Lahore said that the execution must wait until they rule on the case,

No date for the execution has been set.

Oppositions said former military dictator, Ziaul Haq, introduced the blasphemy laws in the 1980s to appease religious parties but they are seen as being regularly misused to settle personal scores.

They said successive governments have failed to repeal or reform them due to the fear of a backlash in the Muslim-majority country.

There were protests in the country when former president, Pervez Musharraf, tried to change some of the Islamic laws.

In 2011, Salman Taseer, then Governor of the largest province of Punjab, met Aasia Bibi and subsequently criticised the blasphemy laws as ‘black laws.’

Tasser was later killed by his own police guard.

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