New Delhi: Saudi Arabia is to abolish flogging as a form of punishment, according to a document from the kingdom’s top court seen by international news agency Reuters on Friday. The declaration by the General Commission for the Supreme Court, taken some time this month, will see the punishment replaced by imprisonment or fines or a mixture of both.

According to the document, “The decision is an extension of the human rights reforms introduced under the direction of King Salman and the direct supervision of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman,”.

Flogging has been in place to punish a various kinds of crimes in Saudi Arabia. Without a codified system of law to go with the texts making up sharia, or Islamic law, individual judges have the freedom to interpret religious texts and declare their sentences.

The Rights groups have documented past cases in which Saudi judges have sentenced criminals to flogging for a range of offenses, including public intoxication and harassment.

Awwad Alawwad the president of the state-backed Human Rights Commission (HRC) told Reuters, “This reform is a momentous step forward in Saudi Arabia’s human rights agenda, and merely one of many recent reforms in the Kingdom,”.

Although the other forms of corporal punishment, such as amputation for theft or beheading for murder and terrorism offenses, have not yet been outlawed.

Adam Coogle, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch stated, “This is a welcome change but it should have happened years ago”. “There’s nothing now standing in the way of Saudi Arabia reforming its unfair judicial system.”

The last time that flogging in Saudi Arabia hit the headlines was in 2015 when blogger Raif Badawi was subjected to the punishment in public, reportedly after being convicted of cybercrime and insulting Islam.