Daily Times

RAWALPINDI: The project for the establishment of a Special Family Court Complex ( SFCC) has been delayed owing to the interference by lawyers and the murder of the coordinator of this project Additional District and Sessions Judge Tahir Khan Niazi. The project has been delayed despite being approved by the Lahore High Court (LHC).

A newly constructed building adjacent to the Civil Lines Station was hired for the setting up of the SFCC at a rent of Rs 2.6 million per month. All the family courts functioning in the district courts were to be shifted to this proposed complex. A majority of Rawalpindi lawyers including the District Bar Association Rawalpindi (DBAR) had categorically rejected this project.

Sources said no consultations were made with the DBAR in this regard nor were the lawyers taken into confidence from the platform of the bar. Therefore, the lawyers were causing hurdles in the materialisation of this project.

The lawyers while expressing their reservations said that no proper arrangement for car parking had been made at the proposed place for the project and a new conflict would emerge due to the parking of the lawyers’ cars.

Five months before the murder of the coordinator of the project, the sessions judge Rawalpindi had consulted the DBAR in this respect but the DBAR had categorically rejected the summary and told the sessions judge that he would be informed about any decision on this count after consultations in the meeting of the executive council of the bar.

The lawyers had however consented for the establishment of this complex in one part of Jinnah Park owned by the Punjab government. The matter was under the consideration of the DCO Rawalpindi. An action committee was to be set up for deciding the matter without bringing it into the notice of the bar. But the matter is still lingering on.

Owing to lack of progress on the initiation of this project, the women clients have to bear the brunt as they have to stand for hours during the hearing of their cases outside the family courts because there are no sitting arrangements available for the ladies outside the family courts.

The women folk said that if the family courts were separated from the civil and criminal courts then it would be beneficial for them as the separation would ensure speedy justice to them.