LAHORE, July 7: The administrative judge for four anti-terrorism courts in the city has sent most of the chargesheets prepared by the Punjab ATCs prosecution and monitoring cell to ordinary criminal courts for trial.

It was learnt that the administrative judge had refused to approve five of the seven chargesheets sent for trial in ATCs last month with the observation that the cell was preparing chargesheets just to accommodate the police version in certain murder and dacoity cases without any legal justification.

Under Section 6(m) of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, which was inserted through an amendment in 2001, only those cases could be tried in ATCs that involved a threat to the life of a public servant discharging his official duty.

Sources disclosed that the administrative judge’s rejection of a majority of the chargesheets prepared by the cell had ignited a “cold war” between him and the cell with the latter deciding to challenge his decision in the Lahore High Court.

The acting head of the cell, Mohammad Nazimudin, conceded that following the decision of administrative judge, the cell was finding it difficult to prepare chargesheets in accordance with the mandatory requirements. “The moment we scrutinize the FIR in most of the cases we can judge that Section 6(m) cannot be applied to them, but we still prepare and forward most of the chargesheets to ATCs in accordance with the wishes of police officials concerned,” he disclosed.

Mr Nazim further acknowledged that the introduction of Section 6(m) had created an anomaly with regard to the jurisdiction of ATCs as now the cell authorities were not sure as to which offences could be tried by ordinary courts and which fell within the exclusive domain of ATCs. “This is for the first time that an administrative judge has taken such a strict stance on our performance.”

The dispute surfaced at a time when the submission of cases to ATCs had already fallen by 50 per cent and even the ATCs’ existence was being questioned following the amendment. The cell in March requested the provincial law ministry to reduce the number of ATCs across the province. Though the ministry’s response was still awaited, the court at Dera Ghazi Khan was closed in May. There are now 13 courts in Punjab, and only 75 cases at Lahore, 100 cases at Gujranwala, 38 at Rawalpindi, 55 at Multan, 45 at Faisalabad, 13 at Sargodha and 41 at Bahawalpur.