Flawed Justice System

By: Abdul Musawir Hakro

In the recent report of the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2022, Pakistan ranked 129, the second worst country in the region after Afghanistan. It is a no-brainer why so; Pakistan has come to a point where criminals feel safer in the streets than citizens. Political influence, extra-judicial killing, victim blaming, inordinate delays, and a backlog of cases — all add up to the flawed justice system.

The Criminal Justice System dispenses nothing but inordinate delays in the disposal of cases. Reportedly, there are cases where a person is acquitted after his death inside the prison, while in some cases the parties to a case have passed away and their descendants are now continuing to seek remedy from the courts. The cases are piling on; over two million cases are pending across the country. In December last year, the government finally decided to recruit 870 judges in lower courts to curtail the pendency of cases. However, there is much more happening on screen than merely the issue of vacancies. Most judges in lower courts lack sound legal expertise on a legal matter, owing to which their verdicts are challenged. Therefore, legal training must be assured especially for the lower courts judges and those who are on the card to be appointed.

One of the major issues on the other hand is many people do not even believe in courts, as they prefer the jirga and panchayat systems to resolve disputes which for them are a cost-effective and quick fix. They show less agitation to trust such alternative ways than the court of law, despite the fact that such conventional systems provide unfair and heinous punishment to the accused based on unreliable and deficient evidence. Yet such practices are better compared to some tribal disputes which are never resolved unless avenged. The tribal footprints can be found in Sindh and Punjab where the law is untraceable and the justice system is alien. Generational conflicts are going on between these tribes; how they will be resolved —  no one knows. What is known, we have to fix what is fixable for now and it’s the core legal institutions.

Police, judiciary, and legal practitioners — all have equally partaken in the deteriorating justice system. Police mostly use corrupt methods to deal with the crimes, be it to get bribes to drop the charges or allegedly carry out murky extrajudicial killings. The judiciary is frequently accused of being partial and politicised. It is witnessed that those in power use the judiciary as a tool to victimise their opponents. By the same token, many legal practitioners show unprofessional behaviour in dealing with the client for the sake of money, by suggesting clients ways of circumventing the law. While some intentionally drag cases to grab small chunks of money from the client, which is a contributing factor to the backlog of cases in the country.

Well, all these illegal practices are commingled in a way that they became part of our social norms. Here, laws are trampled underfoot and made to be broken. In Pakistan, criminals get off scot-free which embolden them to flout the law and make crime a profitable business. Bail is easily granted even to repeat offenders. Furthermore, the jailing mechanism is not well controlled either. In jails, criminals involved in small crimes are placed with those who committed bigger crimes which reportedly has increased the rate of recidivism. Besides, juvenile offenders are mishandled by police authorities during investigations, which resultantly turn them into habitual offenders.

In female cases, many rape cases go unreported for the fear of losing family honour, reputation, modesty and being stigmatised by the hands of the Police. It’s a usual practice that state institutions many times do victim-blaming in rape cases, and show bias and misogynistic attitudes towards the woman. Cases have been reported where the woman who has been raped is being killed while the rapist gets away with impunity. The Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act 2021, which was enacted to consolidate the previously scattered rape laws is also riddled with a myriad of substantive and procedural flaws and facing enormous difficulties in the implementation process. The lack of training in Police and Prosecution departments, no traces of the establishment of Anti-rape crisis cells (ARCCs) and the formation of Special Investigation Officers and Joint Investigation Teams make it impossible to implement for it requires a serious dearth of resources.

All aforementioned cases depict the sad picture of our handicapped justice system, seeking judicial reforms in terms of cost-effectiveness, time efficiency, and reliability to make it accessible for every individual. The dispenser of justice must put transparency in the utmost priority in dealing with the cases and ensure its immunity to any gender bias, political influence, and illicit activities. It has to be done before social evils overlap with what is right.

The writer is a law student at SZABUL and freelance columnist, based in Karachi. He can be reached at [email protected]