Sarmad Ali

A couple of months ago, a Senate committee adopted a draft report on “Provision of Inexpensive and Speedy Justice.”The report recommended some necessary amendments to be made in the legal system for dispensing speedy and transparent justice.According to the report, changes have been recommended in the Civil Procedure Code, Law Reforms Ordinance 1972, Land Acquisition […]

There are about 8,000 Pakistanis who are languishing in different prisons across the world. Most Pakistanis are interned in Saudia Arabia, convicted of human trafficking, drug-smuggling, rape, and other crimes. Pakistan has a bilateral treaty with Saudi Arabia for exchanging of their citizens detained in the other’s country, but that treaty seems to be ineffective. […]

A number of international organisations have recently stated that Pakistan is a safe haven where children from Europe and the rest of the world are taken by their parents or relatives. This is because of the increase in multi-cultural and inter-racial marriages between Pakistani men and foreign women. On account of divorce or separation the […]

Child abduction, child abuse, forced marriages and rapes are widespread problems in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. According to media reports, the number of international child abduction cases has increased across the world over the period of the last eight years. For instance, a total of 512 cases involving 84 different countries were reported to British […]

My contention is if a person is to face trial with fair means fulfilling all international rules and fulfilling the ingredient of Article 10-A of the Constitution of Pakistan prescribed for a trial, hardly a person can then be sentenced to death by the trial courts of Pakistan. The reason for my contention is that […]

The Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan recently overturned the verdict of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), which quashed the conviction of Mumtaz Qadri — the cold-blooded killer of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer — under Section seven of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 (ATA) but retained his conviction under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). […]

The debate concerning the death penalty has ignited once again amongst the legal fraternity of countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty from their criminal justice systems. The debate sparked following the intellectual discourse of the Indian Supreme Court’s (SC’s) judges while reacting to the demand from a section of legal experts for […]

Israel’s right wing conservative Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu was the only who, some months ago, labelled the nuclear deal between Iran and the leading six powers of the world as a ‘historic mistake’. Now, he is the one who has again taken a very hard line concerning Syrian and Iraqi refugees who are looking […]

Pakistan bids to execute a wheelchair-bound convict Abdul Basit, who is disabled and languishing in jail. Abdul Basit was awarded the death sentence in 2009 for killing his girlfriend’s uncle. After his conviction in 2009, he had suffered tubercular meningitis, leaving his lower body paralysed; since then he is wheelchair-bound. A medical board constituted in […]

In Pakistan, women and children are the most vulnerable beings. The recent child abuse scandal of Kasur is a landmark example of their vulnerability in Pakistan. The incident has been observed by human rights groups worldwide, which have expressed their concerns and sympathy to the affected children and women. Child abuse incidents in hierarchical and […]