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Asia Bibi's case has been hugely divisive in religiously conservative Pakistan
This could have been an open and shut case.
The complainants had quarreled with Asia Bibi, and could be quite suspected of having dragged her to the court of malice.
The fact that a formal complaint has been made that is more likely to have been fabricated.
And if that was not enough, some of the glaring disparities emerged in the testimony of different witnesses about the specifics of what happened when, where, and in whose presence.
As in many countries, Pakistan's criminal justice system puts the burden of proof on the prosecution. It applies strict rules of evidence to ensure the case is proven beyond all reasonable doubt.
The slightest deficiency anywhere along the way translates into a benefit for the defendant. But, for eight years, this was not what happened in Bibi's case.
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As is clear from Wednesday 's Supreme Court judgment, the case must be traveled beyond the trial court in Sheikhupura district back in 2010.
But it did, because it was no ordinary case. And because it was no ordinary case, the ruling is likely to go down in the annals of Pakistani law as an historic judgment.
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Hardliners have protested the court's decision
Observers of Pakistan's legal point of view against the blasphemy charges against Asia Bibi were not unique.
There have been cases in which men have been charged, convicted, or acquitted under controversial blasphemy law that dates from 1986.
But Bibi's case was different. For a start, she was the first female non-Muslim.
And it sparked two successive badbadinations of top government officials as well as a hanging.
Significantly, it was a time when the United States was a new democratic phase of the eight-year-long military rule. The powerful security establishment is struggling to maintain control over political decision-making.
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President Pervez Musharraf resigned in 2008 after seizing power in a bloodless military coup in 1999
Extremist Islamism had already been enroached on Pakistan's official state narrative in 1980s – apparently to back the then-military regime's internationally supported anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.
The military used it as a powerful tool against the democratic governments that followed in the 1990s.
After the 9/11 attacks in the US, an era of Talibanization of the wider society, bringing the war to Pakistani citizens.
So, after the increasingly unpopular military regime of General Pervez Musharraf gave way to the elected government of the left wing, Secular Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in 2008, the religious lobby was distrustful.
It was in this climate that a PPP leader and governor of its most powerful province – Punjab – Salman Taseer, was gunned down by one of his religiously inclined bodyguards in January 2011.
Why? Because he had visited Bibi in jail, sympathize with her and expressed a desire to reform the blasphemy law.
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A couple of months later, Pakistan's minister for minority affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti, was shot dead for making similar remarks.
These incidents put Bibi's case on the anvil of the religious lobby, with the anti-blasphemy vigilante groups vowing to draw her blood or that of the judges who would dare let her go.
But while lower court judges are most likely to be involved in the trial stage – a majority of the cases reaching the high court level, due to the absence of strong evidence.
So while Bibi's conviction by the trial court may be understandable, it could only be due to its high profile that the Lahore High Court in 2014 desisted from overturning its conviction despite obvious gaps in evidence.
And this is why today's Supreme Court is "historic".
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A three-judge bench acquitted Asia Bibi
Judge Saqib Nisar, Justice Asif Khosa.
Justice Nisar is due to be withdrawn in January, and there was speculation he could have delayed the announcement of the verdict till after his retirement.
Instead, he has gone ahead and taken the deliberate risk of becoming a target of vigilant groups.
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The first 11 pages of the main 34-page sentence, penned by Chief Justice Nisar, read like a tutorial: what is it? Blasphemy; why it should be punished with death; Pakistan incorporated laws to punish blasphemy; and how Pakistan has inspired the United Nations resolution that declared defamation of religion as a violation of human rights.
It quotes copiously from the Quran and the Prophet's tradition to establish sanctity. But it then goes on to discuss "another aspect of the matter", which is that "sometimes, to fulfill the nefarious designs, the law is misused by individualizing false allegations of blasphemy".
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Several groups protested against the Supreme Court's decision
It says 62 people have been killed for 1990 because of their "history", and mentions the lynching of Mashal Khan at Mardan University as the latest example.
The order also underlines the Prophet's attitude towards other religions.
In a separate 21-page note penned by Justice Khosa, he quotes from what is known as St Katherine's Covenant to establish how the Prophet Guaranteed Protection to Christians in the Islamic State.
Justice Khosa runs a greater risk than Chief Justice Nisar.
He headed the bench in which he made the death sentence of Mumtaz Qadri, the self-confessed killer of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer. Qadri was hanged in February 2016.
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After killing Taseer, Qadri became a hero of the anti-blasphemy lobby. After his death, he was given the burial of a saint in his village near Islamabad. A mausoleum has been built on his grave where devotees flock to pray and make offerings.
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For Anti-Blasphemy Leaders, Bibi's Box Offered To Likeness Bibi hang too.
Apart from meeting the quid pro-quo, this would have turned Bibi into a legal sanctioned example of what would happen when someone is blasphemy the next time.
Goal Justice Khosa has chosen a questionable precedent.
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