Daily Times

Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed Khan took his first suo motu notice on Friday over the ‘inadequate’ facilities in the country to combat the coronavirus.

The chief justice has sent notices to the attorney general and additional attorney general of Pakistan as well as AGs of all four provinces and Gilgit Baltistan. Secretaries of interior and health have also been served with notices along with chief secretaries of all four provinces as well as GB, a private TV channel reported. The CJP has asked the respondents to provide details of what measures the government has taken so far to contain the spread of the virus and what facilities have been provided at the hospitals.

A five-member bench headed by the chief justice and comprising Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmed held the first hearing of the case on Friday. The next hearing will be held on April 13.

On April 1, the same five-member bench had also heard the matter of the release of under-trial prisoners amid coronavirus outbreak. A petition had been filed against the release of the prisoners ordered by the Sindh and Islamabad high courts. “Under what law can suspects and accused be released?” the CJP had asked while hearing arguments, and noted that it was already very difficult to arrest the accused in cases. “The police are already busy with the coronavirus emergency. How can we let criminals be out on the roads as well?” he had asked.

The Supreme Court then ordered over 500 prisoners – temporarily released to slow the spread of coronavirus – to be re-arrested, as it overturned the high courts’ judgments. An exception was however made in the case of prisoners accused of minor crimes.

Earlier this week, the chief justice had also bemoaned the government’s decision to shut down health facilities for people suffering from ailments other than Covid-19 by closing out-patient departments (OPDs) in all hospitals across the country in view of the coronavirus pandemic. He had also criticised the government’s response to the health crisis, saying that ‘nothing was being done on the ground’. He had raised objections over government’s decision to impose a lockdown, provinces’ demands for funds to buy gloves, sanitisers and other medical supplies, lack of testing kits and grim media coverage of the situation. Following the chief justice’s criticism, the provincial governments of Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had announced to reopen OPDs.