By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The federal government has fixed the value of diyat, or blood money, at Rs19,352,390 for the financial year 2026-27, a rise of nearly 97 per cent driven by a sharp climb in silver prices.
A notification issued by the Finance Division on Tuesday set the new rate under sub-section (2) of Section 323 of the Pakistan Penal Code (Act XLV of 1860), replacing the Rs9,828,670 figure that applied through 2025-26. The increase amounts to Rs9,523,720, pushing the compensation payable in murder cases to its highest level yet.
Diyat is the sum an offender must pay to the heirs of a murder victim as compensation, and it forms a central part of Pakistan’s criminal justice framework in cases where a settlement between the parties is permitted under law. The Penal Code ties the figure directly to the price of silver, requiring that it never fall below the value of 30,630 grams of the metal. It is this link that has driven Tuesday’s steep rise, following a marked jump in silver’s market price over the past year.
Under Section 323, courts are directed to determine the diyat amount with reference to the injunctions of Islam as set out in the Quran and Sunnah, while also taking into account the financial circumstances of both the convict and the victim’s heirs. The law is explicit, however, that whatever figure a court arrives at cannot go below the silver-based minimum. Sub-section (2) places the responsibility for calculating that minimum on the federal government, which must publish the silver valuation in the official Gazette on the first of July each year, or another date it considers appropriate, to set the benchmark for the fiscal year ahead.
Tuesday’s revision is not an isolated spike. The diyat value has climbed steeply in recent years, tracking silver’s volatile trajectory on the international market. It stood at Rs6,757,902 in 2023-24, itself a 56 per cent jump from Rs4,318,524 the year before. The latest rise dwarfs even that increase, underlining how sharply silver prices have moved over the past twelve months.
The Finance Division confirmed the newly notified figure would remain in force for the duration of the 2026-27 financial year for all purposes under Section 323.
The scale of the rise has reopened debate around the silver-linked formula that underpins the law. In July 2025, an amendment tabled in the Senate proposed scrapping the 30,630-gram silver benchmark altogether, suggesting it be replaced with either 2,000 grams of gold or a quarter of the convict’s total assets — a change that, if adopted, would fundamentally alter how blood money is calculated in Pakistan.
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