No justice

Clauses in the penal law which allow the families of victims to forgive those responsible for the crimes invariably end up being used by the rich and powerful to escape the consequences of their actions. In a particularly stomach-churning example of this tendency, Raja Khurram Ali Khan,        an additional sessions judge in Islamabad, and his wife appeared to have gotten off scot-free for violence and torture against a 10-year-old maid, Tayyaba, after her father ‘forgave’ them. The details of the incident are shocking. The couple in question not only illegally employed child labour, they were also accused of forcibly burning her hand on a stove, throwing her down a flight of stairs, threatening her and locking her up in a cupboard. Even more scandalously the legal community, normally quick to express outrage, has been mostly silent on the case. Thankfully, Supreme Court Chief Justice Saqib Nisar has now taken suo motu action in the case and will hopefully be able to provide this young girl justice. This incident should also give us an opportunity to revisit laws that create different tiers of justice, where the influential never face punishment for what they have done. When someone with the power of a judge can get away with flouting the law, it shows that the law does not apply even to those who are supposed to be upholding it.

As outraged as all of us are over the incident, we also know how common it is to employ child labour and treat children as personal property. Tayyaba is only one of millions of children forced to work, often by their impoverished parents. Those parents are then susceptible to pressure because they lack the resources to fight for justice and are left with no option but to accept whatever meagre payout they are offered in return for dropping all charges. The media could act as a check on this but it, usually so quick to pounce on a hint of political scandal, is too often quiet on matters of labour rights and child abuse until it is too late. This is a failure not just of one important official throwing his weight around but us as a society. Had our laws not always allowed justice to be bought and our culture not tolerated the victimisation of the most vulnerable among us, it would not require outrage on social media for such stories to be picked up by the press and eventually taken up by the Supreme Court. The legal community and the rest of society need to rise up if they are truly interested in delivering justice. A system that promotes impunity for those in the right places will never be able to provide justice to children like Tayyaba.