KARACHI: The administrative judge of the anti-terrorism courts (ATCs) in Karachi has ordered transfer of 400 cases from three overburdened courts to six other ATCs, including the four newly established ones, for their early disposal, it emerged on Tuesday.

Currently, five of the 10 ATCs are functional.

Judge Bashir Ahmed Khoso of the ATC-I, who is also the administrative judge of the ATCs in Karachi, ordered the shifting of 100 cases from the ATC-I, 200 cases from the ATC-II and 100 cases from ATC-III to the six other ATCs in the city.

A court official said that the transfer order came on a directive of the high court, as the three ATCs were overloaded with around 300 cases pending before the ATC-I, over 550 before the ATC-II and around 400 before the ATC-III.

The administrative judge has assigned 100 cases each to the ATC-IV and V for trial and 50 cases each to the newly established ATC-VI, -VII, -VIII and -IX, which have yet to start functioning. The presiding officer of the ATC-X has not been appointed so far.

Previously, three anti-terrorism courts were working in the city to decide all the cases under the anti-terror law. It was on the apex court directive that the government in March 2013 authorised judges of 15 sessions courts to try the cases under the Anti-Terrorism Act to decide a number of cases pending before the ATCs.

While the backlog of cases was not cleared over the next couple months, two more anti-terrorism courts (ATC-IV and -V) were set up in June 2013.

However, even after the addition of the two courts, a large number of old cases remained undecided and finally in September 2013 the Sindh government announced that five new ATCs would be established and requested the Sindh High Court to appoint judges for the five new ATCs to clear the backlog of terrorism, kidnapping for ransom and extort-ion cases.

While presiding officers of four of the five ATCs were later appointed, the courts did not function for want of staff.

The ATCs have been established for speedy trial of cases under terror law. According to Section 19(7) of the Anti-terrorism Act, the court shall, on taking cognisance of a case, proceed with the trial on a day to day basis and shall decide the case within seven days, failing which an application may be submitted to the administrative judge of the high court concerned for appropriate directions for expeditious disposal of the case.

Section 13(2) of the ATA says cases shall be assigned to a court one at a time, or in order to ensure that the time of the court is not wasted if for some reason a given case cannot proceed more than one case can be assigned to it at any time or from time to time.

However, hundreds of cases are still pending before the ATCs in Karachi leaving them with no other option but to fix around 10 cases for hearing daily.

Published in Dawn, July 9th, 2014