17 February 2004	Tuesday	25 Zilhaj 1424

LAHORE, Feb 16: The Justice and Law Commission has suggested a draft bill seeking the repeal of as many as eight sections of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1898, consequent to their incorporation in the Hudood Ordinance.

The draft bill, discussed at a commission's meeting in Islamabad on Feb 14, is to be sent to the federal government for moving the National Assembly for the amendment to the CrPC whose schedule-II still retains them from causing confusion.

Sources told this correspondent that the sections related to offences of kidnapping and abduction of women for forcible marriages, rape, adultery, keeping married women in confinement and selling minors for prostitution.

Sections 366, 372, 373, 375, 376, 493, 497 and 498 of the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860, were dropped from the PPC as they were made part of Section 19(3) of the Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979.

These offences are triable by courts of sessions and the Federal Shariat Court has been provided in the Constitution to hear appeals against their decisions in its capacity as an appellant forum.

Similarly, the commission has, through the same draft amendment law, sought the exclusion of sections 198, 199, 199-A, 199-B and 345 of the Criminal Procedure Code which provides for the procedure of courts to proceed in offences relating to abduction of married women for criminal intentions.

The JLC observes that all these sections of the criminal code have become irrelevant and redundant in view of the Hudood laws. Another set of laws proposed to be amended relates to criminal breach of contract or services -- sections 490 and 492 of the PPC -- was changed by the Breach of Contract (Repealing) Act, 1925, but was anomalously retained in the Criminal Procedure Code.