Islamabad : Pakistan’s judicial system, particularly the lower courts or trial courts, is so painfully slow and corrupt that it has become a torture for anybody who may have to face a case in court of law. The situation is torturous for those who find themselves involved in civil cases.
Such cases drag on for decades, impoverishing the parties engaged in such cases, which seems to have no end. It has been observed that there is a strong nexus of the lawyers and the judges as well as the support staff in these courts. Because the civil judges are appointed from the practicing lawyers who take the required exams to become judges, they are always enjoying good terms and relations with the lawyers appearing in their courts after they had become judges.
And the criminal and civil laws and procedures riddled with lacunas have overwhelmingly being exploited in the trial courts, delaying the justice to unimaginable lengths of time.
Unfortunately these lacunas are being mainly exploited by the criminal elements, the infamous ‘qabza mafias’ and the blackmailers, more than benefiting the aggrieved parties in such cases.
Just to quote one example, a property dealer got a case registered against a common citizen who sold his house without taking the services of that property dealer. The property dealer was furious for having lost the opportunity of earning a hefty commission from the sale and coaxed one party to file a fake case in the civil court, making the property disputed one. He expanded the case by involving the allotting authority in the case as well.
After filing the case, the property dealer conveyed a message to the owner of the property to pay him half a million rupees and he would get the case withdrawn. The owner of the property refused to oblige.
The case continued for almost five years. It was dismissed from the civil judge’s court. The appeal was rejected by the session judge’s court. The appeal filed in the high court was also dismissed.
During these five years the poor property owner paid a big fee to the lawyers in the case, suffered persistent mental torture, fell physically sick, his family life got disturbed and in the end he suffered overall losses to the tune of around Rs2 million only to prove at levels in the courts that the case filed against him was false, frivolous and based on malice.
There are hundreds of thousands of such cases lying pending in different courts of law all over the country, only because of there are deeply ingrained lacunas in the law as well as system.
It has become so abundantly clear that the criminal and civil justice system in Pakistan has become crippled and fallen hostage to vested interests over the years. As a result people are losing faith in the system.
And the situation has reached this stage because of lack of practical and purposeful reforms in our judiciary and the police department both at operational as well as administrative level and in the prison system.
These immediately need meaningful reforms, starting from the police department, especially to make it independently operational and administratively autonomous, then the judicial system and the prisons would improve the whole society.
There are alarming indicators reflecting Pakistan’s conditions at international level if one may look at the rankings published by the World Justice Project (WJP) recently according to which currently Pakistan stands at abysmally low 103 ranked out of total 106 countries surveyed.
Looking at the number of cases lying pending in the courts and the rate at which the cases are being handled and disposed off, especially in the trial courts in lower judiciary, there is most urgent need to introduce and implement strong and meaningful reforms.
We are in need of a large number of well trained and honest judges to start with. The independent jurists and legal experts have proposed that Judicial Services of Pakistan (JSP) should be established on the pattern of All Pakistan Services as provided under article 240-242 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973.
They are of the view that the JSP should be created as a cadre under the existing Civil Superior Services (CSS) like other occupational groups and their services may be placed at the disposal of the High Courts in the federal capital as well as all other provincial high courts for starting from district judiciary as enshrined under article 175 of the constitution of Pakistan, 1973.
They said that each judicial officer should start career from the district judiciary as ‘Civil Judge’ and rise up the ladder to high courts and the Supreme Court of Pakistan only after attending and appearing and clearing the necessary courses designed, conducted and assessed by a ‘Board of Experts’ comprising retired jurists of impeccable record and repute.
The promotion and postings/transfers of the judges should completely rest with this independent ‘Board of Experts’ and any type of political or external intervention should strictly be avoided. They recommended that the political intervention in the affairs of the CSS should also be completely eliminated and the prime minister or any other public office holder should have no role in deciding the promotions, postings and transfers of the officers in bureaucracy.
They also strongly recommended that the policy of direct induction in high courts and the Supreme Court of Pakistan may be totally revised and such vertical mobility be done purely on merit and it should be enhanced considerably to meet the extraordinary burden that has piled up on our judiciary over the years.