Daily Times

Sir: Apropos reports about an event involving Chief Justice (CJ) Saqib Nisar, who admonished an Additional District and Sessions Judge on his recent visit to Larkana District Court, where he found the officer not performing his duties to his expectation. It is an open secret that our lower judiciary — especially those located in interior and rural Sindh, South Punjab, Balochistan and KP — is rotten to the core.

While the superior judiciary has become proactive in performing its designated roles to deliver justice and reform subordinate courts, the fact remains that things are not in order. The sole purpose of creating paid a judiciary system was to protect the law abiding citizens of Pakistan from abuse and excesses by elected and paid civil or uniformed public office holders, feudal lords, dacoits, land mafia and industrialists.

Lower civil judiciary performance should be judged from their ability to deliver justice and protect the lives, honour, dignity and property of ordinary citizens. In this regard, they have failed miserably. The manner and ease with which the land mafia of this country has illegally taken over thousands of acres of private and state land — including forests and coastal belt in Sindh — is proof of this, if any is needed that is. The situation in Punjab is similar. Forest and state land has been grabbed by these gangsters, who have felled thousands of trees and created a significant environmental risk. All the while, the DMG, Law Enforcement and Judiciary have stood-by doing nothing. Numerous incidents of miscarriage of justice have been reported. In certain cases innocents have been jailed and had their lives destroyed.

Judges are not supposed to listen to private mobile phones while performing judicial duties in courtrooms. They are required to expedite hearing cases and ADS Judge Larkana was found negligent on this count. There is a backlog of over 38,205 cases which have not been decided for years because of extended adjournments.

MALIK TARIQ ALI

Lahore

Published in Daily Times, July 1^st 2018.