Judiciary established under Pakistani constitutions of 1956, 1962 and 1973 keeps non- exemplary track record of delivering justice. Leaving the big guns on big scams it mostly wrenched the throat of the inconsequential on their petty crimes. From Maulve Tameez-ud-Din case, the birth-point of the doctrine of necessity, to the present Pervez Musharaf High Treason case there are so many law-breaking issues where the judiciary did not deliver the real justice. Be it the case of Maulana Maudoodi wherein he was awarded with the death sentence, Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rehman’s Agartala Saazish Case which led him to the order of capital punishment.
So many examples of discriminatory ‘justice’ can be presented from judicial track of Pakistan. A judge leaning towards the government dismisses the application against the government with one pretext or the other, mostly on technical grounds, and being against that very government takes the government to the task with full strength. Interestingly enough, no judge has ever entertained a public grievance against a sitting or retired judge even if a judge under complaint has done a blunder. A fine example of such a discriminatory treatment is the Tahir-ul-Qadri case, lodged against the members of the Election Commission of Pakistan challenging the transparency of their appointments procedure, which being against the interest of the members ECP (who were retired judges), was dismissed on technical ground and not on merit. In this case the court, though, saved the interests of retired judges yet infringed the political rights of the public at large by letting the commission facilitate massive rigging in the General Elections 2013. The same was outcome of recent ‘findings’ of the ‘Judicial Commission’ constituted after the long sit-in of the PTI and PAT. Despite the provision of law the election petitions were never disposed of in stipulated timei.e.120 days but no complaint in this regard too was entertained by the judiciary rather ‘Stay Orders’ were issued to keep up the status-quo.
HAFIZ KHURAM SHAHZAD,
Rawalpindi, April 5.