Islamabad, March 11 (Reuters): Pakistan?s Islamic court today asked five men found guilty of gangraping a woman but later acquitted to appear before it, saying a high court that let them go had no jurisdiction to deal with the matter.

The men had been ordered to rape Mukhtaran Mai by a village council as punishment for her brother?s suspected affair with a woman from the powerful Mastoi tribe. Mai?s brother was also kidnapped and sodomised by Mastoi men.

The rape and the acquittal shocked Pakistan and raised an international outcry over the treatment of women in Pakistan.

The federal shariat court said that a high court in Multan, which struck down a lower court decision that found the men guilty of the July 2002 rape of Mai, had no jurisdiction to rule on the case.

In its March 3 appeal hearing, the Multan High Court quashed the convictions of five of the six men sentenced to death in the case, citing lack of evidence, and commuted the death sentence of a sixth man to life imprisonment.

The shariat court ordered all six men to appear before it to hear their appeals afresh. It also ordered eight other men acquitted in the original trial to appear before it.