It’s been almost seven years and four months for Asia Bibi, a fifty-year old Christian labourer, in jail. She is charged for uttering derogatory remarks against Islam and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in response to provocative remarks by her Muslim coworkers while working in the fields of Ittanwali, district Nankana in Punjab province.

According to court documents, her coworkers refused to drink water fetched by Asia, a Christian, for them, believing that the utensil had become ‘unclean’ after it was touched by a Christian woman.

Later a local cleric of the village mosque became a complainant in the case on behalf of two coworker sisters. The complaint was properly lodged on June 19, 2009. Asia, charged under section 295-C of the blasphemy law (that carries death as the only sentence) was arrested the same day and has been living in prison amid high security because of fears of attack. In November 2010, the lower court had awarded death sentence to Asia. This was later confirmed by the Lahore High Court in October 2014.

In the same year, Chaudhry Naeem Shakir, SK Chaudhry (who also defended her in district court), and Tahir Khalil Sindhu, a serving provincial minister, defended her case in the Lahore High Court but failed. The FIR against Asia Bibi was lodged five days after the incident. According to the arguments of Asia’s attorney, the complainant was not present at the place where the incident happened and the testimony of ‘interested witnesses’ was not corroborated by some independent evidence. There was no independent corroboration of the two main witnesses -- two sisters -- by the prosecution. Lack of coordination among her defence lawyers and unity on the complainants’ side was very clearly seen during the hearing at the Lahore High Court.

Asia’s last window of hope for acquittal is likely to open in mid-October. The chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan has approved an early hearing of her final appeal.

As the date of the final hearing of her appeal against the decision is approaching, voices from Christian community and human rights defenders across the world are becoming louder. These groups are appealing the court to acquit Asia Bibi and asking for the repeal of the country’s largely-misused blasphemy laws.

A group of Christian community in Australia has demonstrated in the Australian capital last Saturday, seeking justice for Asia Bibi. The rally urged the Australian government to take up the matter with the Pakistani government.

An online petition by a Christian group, addressed to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,  is also demanding to free Asia Bibi.

In November 2010 (the year the civil court sentenced Asia to death) Pope Francis’s predecessor Benedict XVI called for Asia’s release while her husband wrote to the Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain to seek permission to move her to France.

"We believe there are enough grounds for her acquittal being a woman and having a grown-up physically and mentally disabled child which she needs to look after. And she has been suffering in jail for more than seven years now against a charge which she has denied and which was framed later after proper consultation with a local mullah of village’s mosque that indicates mala-fide," says Saiful Malook, counsel of Asia in the Supreme Court.

Malook says it is important the case was heard early. "We fully trust the court and believe it will do justice."

Malook was also appointed official prosecutor by the previous government to plead against Mumtaz Qadri, an official police guard of that time’s governor Salmaan Taseer who killed the latter for defending Asia Bibi.

Taseer, the then Punjab governor, went inside the jail to meet Asia and assured her of all possible legal help. Taseer had maintained that the case against Asia was fabricated and based on false grounds. He had moved a request to the former president of Pakistan to pardon Asia’s sentence. Taseer never knew his support to Asia would cost him his life -- that his official guard would shoot him dead in broad daylight in a busy market in Islamabad, on January 4, 2011.

About two months after the assassination of Taseer, the then federal minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti was also killed in the country’s capital for talking about the need to revise the blasphemy laws. An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) awarded Qadri death penalty in October 2011. SC rejected Qadri’s appeal last year and he was executed in Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, on February 29, 2015.

In 1991, Pakistan’s Federal Shariah Court’s five-member bench rejected the option of life imprisonment in section 295-C for blasphemy laws approving death row as the only option.

A report "Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan -- A Historical Overview" by Islamabad based Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) highlights that since 1990 as many as 52 blasphemy accused have been murdered extra-judicially. Many of them were even convicted by the courts and were still targeted by other prisoners or police guards in jails.

Chaudhry Ghulam Mustafa, who is on the complainant’s side, is confident that their case is strong and Supreme Court would uphold the death sentence against Asia Bibi.

"Justice in blasphemy cases is becoming difficult in Pakistan due to fear and threats," says IA Rehman, secretary general Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). "The case of Asia Bibi is much internationalised and that makes it further sensitive." He hopes for justice for her, and thinks that confirming the death sentence to a woman and that too from a minority community is very unusual. He believes the high profile of the case cannot affect the apex court and its judges.