On April 7, 2014, the residence of the special public prosecutor, Abdul Maroof, came under attack by two unknown, armed individuals. Nobody was physically hurt, no verbal or written message was left behind and nobody claimed responsibility. They just came, fired some gunshots at the residence and then fled. All they left behind was an unuttered and unwritten message conveying a threat, “Stay away from our cases or be ready to face the consequences.” Mr Maroof remained undeterred and continued performing his duties while the lawyers’ community raised its voice against this use of scare tactics by criminals and boycotted legal proceedings at the anti-terrorist courts the next day to register their protest over this incident, demanding action against the culprits.
Two days before this attack on Mr Maroof’s house, a senior lawyer and politician, Shahab Khattak, narrowly escaped a deadly attack on his car in Peshawar. These attacks had no other intention except to create fear among all those who work towards bringing justice to all accused, innocent or guilty. The reaction of the legal fraternity was natural. While the bar councils were busy mobilising the lawyers’ community to show their unity against a serious threat to their lives, two more lawyers lost their lives within the space of two days. On April 10, Waqarul Hasan Zaidi was shot dead in Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Syed Ghulam Haider was killed on April 12 in Jamshed Quarter. Both of them were Shia Muslims, a religious minority that has become highly vulnerable to target killings in a country that was claimed to have been created for the Muslims of undivided India to live peacefully without fear of the non-Muslim majority. Is religious identity the only reason for the lawyers to become victims of target killing in the country? No, there are other reasons as well.
On September 30, 2013, Awais Sheikh, the counsel for Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh who was murdered in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail in May 2013, had to take permanent refuge in Sweden. It was reported that an attempt was made to abduct him in Lahore a day before Singh’s death. On December 11, 2013, the lawyer for Dr Shakil Afridi, who helped the US track down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, had to leave the country because of serious threats to his life.
Recently, a senior advocate in Multan, Rashid Rehman, was threatened, allegedly by the persons representing the prosecution, when he appeared to plead the blasphemy case of Bahauddin Zakariya University lecturer Junaid Hafeez. Last year, this case was pleaded by another lawyer, Chaudhry Mudassir Sagheer and, according to the press report of June 3, 2013, he had also sought police protection following the threats he received. Besides receiving threats from some outlawed organisations, he was intimidated by his own lawyers’ community as well.
The excerpt of a press report of June 3, 2012 is a good document describing what kinds of threats some of the lawyers in the country have to face in performing their legal duties: “The lawyers’ groups in the district bar has reportedly already severed contacts with Mudassir following his involvement in the case. On Saturday, as he appeared before additional district sessions judge Justice Zia Khan, Mudassir was met with derision from other lawyers present in the court, the sources maintained. They said the lawyers held Mudassir equally responsible for blasphemy for ‘daring to defend’ Hafeez.”
The rule of law was the most popular slogan during the movement for the restoration of the judiciary back in 2007. Now, after six years of the success of the movement for the restoration of the judiciary, we painfully observe that the violation of the rule of law is being practiced by those who were the leading lights of this movement. The previous counsel for the lecturer of Bahauddin Zakaria University, Choudhry Mudassir Sagheer and his colleague Haq Nawaz, had to quit the case on June 13, 2013 after receiving death threats from outlawed organisations. Now Rashid Rehman is facing similar threats for pursuing this case. Only God knows how long he will be able to withstand these threats. The special public prosecutor, Abdul Maroof, has been facing verbal and physical threats because of his involvement in different high profile criminal cases. He has been able to resist these threats so far but it was not possible for the lawyers of Dr Shakil Afridi and Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh. They had to leave the country to save themselves and their families.
The use of threats and intimidation against a counsel of an under trial case is basically an attempt to deprive legal support to one of the litigants and thus deny him justice. How can the rule of law be established in a country where lawyers are willingly ready to work against it? How can the lawyers’ protest against the target killings of their colleagues be effective when the lawyers are found to be garlanding the killer of former governor of the Punjab, Salmaan Taseer? How can the threats to the special prosecutor Abdul Maroof be separated from the threats received by the lawyers of other cases when all of them were performing one and the same legal responsibility: to provide legal help to a litigant?
Is it not the constitutional right of an accused or a plaintiff, irrespective of the nature of his crime or appeal, to have legal support available to him without any difficulty? If it is a constitutional right, what leads the lawyers’ community to work in defiance of it? Are they trying to establish the rule of law or lawlessness in the country? After setting the great example of restoring the judiciary, the legal fraternity needs to set another example now to become real guardians of the rule of law and discourage all those efforts that are imbued with a design to establish the rule of lawlessness. Would the lawyers’ community be able to look at this issue from a legal point of view instead of their ideological one?
The writer is a freelance columnist