ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has ordered the lower judiciary to avoid commuting punishment of the convicts against whom allegations of corruption have been proved without any doubt, unless there are concrete reasons.

“Reducing the punishment of a person convicted of corruption is tantamount to fortifying and strengthening this menace,” deplored Justice Dost Mohammad Khan.

Therefore, the courts should avoid reducing a sentence unless there were some concrete reasons, the judge said.

The direction came when a two-judge bench comprising Justice Mushir Alam and Justice Khan dismissed an appeal moved by a former ‘Patwari’ (revenue officer), Mohammad Akram Baloch, against the May 16 judgement of the Lahore High Court’s Bahawalpur bench.

Akram Baloch challenged the judgement in the Supreme Court although the high court had reduced his punishment which had paved the way for his release from prison.

But Justice Khan in his four-page verdict written in Urdu observed that the high court should have preferred not to reduce the punishment because the menace of corruption was eating into the very vitals of the state. Unless the malaise of corruption was checked and discouraged timely, it would debilitate the very foundations of the state, forcing it to let go of the dream of living like an independent and prosperous nation.

Akram Baloch was accused of demanding bribe from one Sajid Mehmood for the transfer of 30 kanals and seven marals of agriculture land in Bahawalpur in the name of his wife and other relatives on Aug 21, 2013.

Mehmood had paid the amount of Rs144,000, but when he went to receive documents of the transfer deeds after a few days, the patwari demanded more money to complete the task.

Feeling aggrieved, Mehmood filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Department, Punjab, which forwarded the case to the district sessions judge in Bahawalpur. The district judge directed the civil judge concerned to conduct a raid and submit a report.

During the raid, the patwari was caught red-handed with the marked money which Mehmood had paid to him as a second instalment.

The apex court judgement said that provincial governments had spent millions of rupees from the taxpayers’ money to computerise the system of different provincial departments, especially the revenue departments, only because of rampant corruption in these organisations.

Had employees of these departments been honest and sincere, there would have been no need of digitalising the record system.

Reverting to the case, the verdict deplores that showing leniency or compassion to convicts who are guilty of committing corruption has the potential of stigmatising the entire judicial system of the country.

The court was not happy with the fact that the prosecution did not bother to move an application before the apex court challenging the reduction in the punishment and requesting for the enhancement of the punishment of the accused.

While concluding the judgement the SC bench, however, said that it would not be appropriate to send the accused again to jail, especially when he had already been released from prison.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2016