JUSTICE delayed, as the aphorism goes, is justice denied. And in Pakistan, this does seem to be the case. On Wednesday, Sindh Law Minister Ziaul Hasan Lanjar accepted that morethan 5,000 cases were pending in around 50 anti-terrorism courts that are functioning in the province. Speaking to the media at the Sindh Assembly after a meeting to review a proposal for increasing the number of ATCs in Sindh, he claimed that the number of such courts had been increased and would be further added to if needed. But the devil, as always, lies in the detail. Mr Lanjar also said that the provincial government would recruit another 400 prosecutors because this department had not been performing as it should be. Reportedly, a committee was formed in this regard that was jointly headed by the home secretary and prosecutor general. He also referred to last year’s plan of recruiting law graduates for the position of 170 inspectors on the legal side and 200 inspectors on the investigation side.

Such intentions — though praiseworthy — tend to obfuscate the picture of the country’s justice system, where the primary problem is the huge backlog of cases that exists in all courts, whether at the lowest tier of trial courts or the appellate forum. A similar picture exists for platforms of justice all over the country. The ATCs were themselves set up to fast-track proceedings on cases of the most heinous nature, because the regular court system was unable to process them in a timely fashion. What we have seen in recent years, though, is their being used as an alternative to the normal justice system. Within the ATCs and without, the problems range from a lack of incentives for professionals to join the prosecution service to poor investigation. Further, despite sporadic efforts over the years to clear out the backlog, the reality remains that litigants and those accused of wrongdoing must wait for years till their fate is decided. This leads to all sorts of greater problems, not the least of them being the creation of alternate — sometimes illegal — dispute resolution systems including jirgas and panchayats. The state needs to show far more resolve in its duty to provide justice, and the first steps towards this goal should be to clear out the backlog of cases that has built up over the years and to beef up investigation, prosecution and adjudication.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2017