LAHORE: Many judges in Pakistan history have shown courage under pressure but several did not pick up courage when they were supposed to do so, said senior advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan Hamid Khan.

Mr Khan was speaking during a talk on his latest book “A History of the Judiciary in Pakistan” organsied by the Oxford University Press at its auditorium here on Friday.

The book published by the OUP has traced the judicial history of Pakistan from August 1947 to March 2009, when the judiciary was restored.

The book includes detailed discussion of the acts, lives and judgments of important Pakistani judges.

The author said he had defined different periods of Pakistan’s judiciary through different chief justices and added that the judicial history had recounted doings and wrongdoings of judges that had created their good or bad image in the country’s judicial history.

He said the judiciary had generally remained distracted as it also took burden of deciding that the incumbent governments (in respective periods) were legitimate or not.

Mr Khan has also explained that how judiciary had faced difficult times in terms of availability of infrastructure facilities till applying independent minds.

In Pakistan’s early days, he said, the working conditions for the judges were difficult rather oppressive.

The author said Ziaul Haq’s regime was a terrible time for judiciary and added that Justice Haleem’s court was doing nothing during 1981 till Zia’s death.

Actually, Justice Haleem’s court worked after Zia’s death till his retirement in 1989.

He said Gen Musharraf also tried to do everything with judiciary what Ziaul Haq had done. “Judiciary in Pakistan has always been fighting for its survival,” he added.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2016