Court decisions

It is perplexing to see how the decisions of our superior courts have paved the way for some of high-profile individuals to go scot-free while in some cases a time limit has been fixed along with appointment of monitoring judges. The former president, Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf, model Ayyan Ali and others have been allowed to go abroad. Some of them will probably never return. Asif Ali Zardari has got a clean chit in all his cases which had lingered on for the last 15 years. However, Nawaz Sharif and his family members are being persecuted through a time-bound order from the superior court.

I am not favouring the Sharif family. Anyone who has committed a crime of any sort must be punished. However, there is a general perception that the courts have used two different yardsticks in dealing with the cases of individuals who have been allowed to go abroad and that with Nawaz Sharif. Will Gen Musharraf ever come back to face the music or will Zardari be ever tried for the illegal wealth he has accumulated? Only time will tell. However, one thing goes in favour of Nawaz Sharif – he is facing the courts. Is the accountability process limited to the Sharif family? Will the authorities apply the same yardstick to other 400 individuals whose names have appeared in the Panama case? The judicial activism exhibited so far in the Nawaz Sharif case must be carried forward in other cases of similar nature.

Cdre (r) Sajjad Ali Shah Bokhari

Islamabad