LAHORE - Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah yesterday constituted special benches in Lahore High Court for the litigants of five divisions of Punjab including Sargodha, Faisalabad, DG Khan, Gujranwala and Sahiwal.
CJ Shah took this decision to meet demands of the lawyers from these five divisions.
According to a court official, the special benches would not adjourn cases of the respective divisions without proper hearing. After the summer vacations, the special benches would be notified for their proper working, the official added.
On July 18, LHC full court headed by Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah ruled out the demand of establishing new benches of the high court in five divisions of Punjab. The full court deliberated the question of creating news benches for three days.
The lawyers of the respective five divisions, however, had rejected the decision of the full court saying that they would go on strike and would not appear before the courts. The lawyers had also announced to go on hunger strike against the decision of the full court.
reply sought
The Lahore High Court yesterday directed the Punjab home secretary and the inspector general of prisons to submit replies in a petition challenging detention of a man who had completed his sentence awarded him on charges of attacking former president Pervez Musharraf in 2003.
Saira Khan, a mother, filed habeas corpus petition and challenged detention of her son Adnan Khan. Through her counsel Advocate Mujahid Waseem, the petitioner lady contended that her son had undergone 15-year jail term awarded him by a military court. She said the authorities, however, were not releasing him.
The petitioner said her son was not given the benefit of reduction of imprisonment by the military court under Section 382-B of CrPC. The petitioner counsel argued that the said Section says that the length of any sentence of imprisonment imposed upon an accused person in respect of any offence shall be treated as reduced by any period during which he was detained in custody for such offence.
He further argued that the convict was taken into custody in 2003 but he was not given the benefit of the said provision in the law.
He stated that a single bench of the high court had rejected his petition in this regard but later a division bench allowed his appeal with directions to the jail authorities to implement the reduction in imprisonment as per section 382-B of CrPC.
The petitioner’s counsel said that the government challenged the decision before the Supreme Court but its appeal was dismissed. Therefore, he said, the convict was detained in jail illegally as he had already undergone his sentence. He prayed the court to order the jail authorities to release the petitioner’s son.
