Justice on Trial

IHC Bar president stresses need to investigate claims that establishment dictates judicial verdicts

Islamabad: A senior lawyer and president of the Islamabad High Court Bar Association, Shoaib Shaheen, has said that the Chief Justice of Pakistan should institute an inquiry to probe allegations levelled by the federal interior minister to the effect that in some cases judicial rulings were dictated by member of the establishment.

Mr Shaheen voiced this demand while talking to Bol News last week.

The interior minister, Rana Sanaullah Khan, said in a recent interview with a private TV channel that many officials linked to the establishment had been influencing the judiciary to extract rulings that would benefit their so-called ‘political proxies’.

Without naming names, the minister referred to at least one high official who was helping Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party to obtain favourable verdicts from the judiciary, adding that since that official had now become “inactive”, the courts may stop putting off cases against the PTI by issuing one stay order after another.

He also revealed in the same interview that as a member of the parliamentary committee on the appointment of Judges, he had to drop his opposition to the elevation of a particular judge when another member of the establishment approached him and put pressure on him.

Referring to this interview of Rana Sanaullah, Shoaib Shaheen raised the question as to whether Mr Sanaullah’s own party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), too had been a beneficiary of similar favours by the establishment in the past? “What about the cases that were decided in favour of the members of Sharif family; was that done under the same arrangement?” he asked.

According to Mr Shaheen, it is becoming increasingly important for the judiciary to step up and clarify the situation, otherwise there was a risk that the trust and faith of the public in the country’s judicial system would be compromised.

If Rana Sanaullah’s allegations are found to be correct, action should be taken against the responsible judges. If not, Mr Sanaullah should be charged with contempt of court, he said.

He cited some recent examples of the confusions that surrounded the role of the judiciary in some prominent cases.

One of them was the suo-motu notice issued in the murder case of journalist Arshad Sharif, directing the concerned authorities to register a first information report (FIR) in the case. “It is important to unveil the truth as to who killed Arshad Sharif,” he said. “He was killed in Kenya, but the foot prints of the case definitely lead back to Pakistan.”

Then there are cases against PTI’s Azam Swati and Shahbaz Gill. “It is a Supreme Court ruling that no person would be charged in the same case twice, but 37 FIRs were registered against Swati in similar cases in Sindh and Balochistan, and he was tortured while in custody. Journalists Ayaz Amir and Sami Ibrahim were also tortured. All this needs to end,” he said.

Asked about the role of the parliamentarians in the elevation of judges to higher judiciary, Shoaib Shaheen termed it “disappointing”, saying that during the lawyers’ movement, “we faced so many difficulties and spent time in jails. We faced financial issues but continued our struggle for the supremacy of the law. We didn’t make those sacrifices to see the judiciary sliding under the influence of the establishment.”

He said that while the role of the police is to conduct a fair investigation following the registration of an FIR, its actions are always influenced by bribes from the commoners and dictation from the powerful quarters.

“If a former prime minister (Imran Khan) can’t get an FIR of an assassination attempt on him registered with the police despite having his own party government in the province, then what good can you expect from the system,” he said.