December 22, 2008	Monday	Zilhaj 23, 1429

KARACHI, Dec 21: The basic aim of holding an identification parade of an accused is to strengthen the prosecution’s case. But in a number of cases it dents the prosecution side as the investigation officers and other relevant authorities lack knowledge of the legal formalities and procedure of an identification parade, it has emerged.

Sources say that a majority of identification parades have not been held as per the law as mostly the investigators have little knowledge about it and sometimes the judicial magistrates are also unaware about the law and process for the identification parade.

Legal experts say the identification parade is conducted under Section 22 of the Qanun-i-Shahadat Order 1984. Its procedure is explained in the high court rules and the Sindh criminal circular. The Supreme Court had also set some parameters in this connection in 1996.

The related law and procedure says that the identification parade must be held as soon as possible after the arrest of the accused but not later than 15 days and the police have to ensure that the witnesses or complainant have not seen the accused after the incident.

The parade is always held for two purposes: first to establish the identity of the accused and, second, to assign the role played in the commission of an offence. A witness must disclose the context in which he or she identifies the accused before the parade.

An identification parade is considered invalid when no role is attributed to the accused during the commission of the offence while an identification test with an unexplained delay of one week conducted not in accordance with the rules cannot be relied upon.

Experts say it is the responsibility of the relevant court staff to arrange nine muffled faces and their ages, height, body and colour must be similar to that of the accused.

The judicial magistrates concerned have to ask them to line up with the accused and after that they call the witness and ask him to identify the accused and assign his role in the case. Then the JMs have to ask the witness to leave the courtroom and change the previous position of the accused from the queue before calling the witness for a second round. The same procedure is adopted in the third round.

The identification of a voice is conducted when the witness is blind or he has only heard the voice of the accused during the commission of the crime and the same rules and procedure are followed in voice identification.

Criticising the investigators, legal experts say that they usually make an unnecessary delay in holding an identification parade and mostly bring the witness and the accused in the same vehicle and sometimes the investigation officers present the accused before the media while obtaining the remand.

The accused persons are also exposed to the witnesses, the police stations, and the police produce the ‘arranged witnesses’ before the court to identify the accused in blind FIRs, that discard the sanctity of the identification parade.

Due to the lack of proper judicial training, the majority of judicial magistrates are also not fully aware of the rules and procedures of an identification parade and even they remain unaware of or doubtful about the law under which they hold the identification parade.

The legal experts urged the government to arrange special training sessions for the judicial magistrates and investigation officers at the Sindh Judicial Academy in order to improve the judicial system at the grass-roots level and to create awareness of the laws in the investigating agencies.