LAHORE, July 26: Lahore High Court (LHC) Chief Justice Iftikhar Hussain Chaudhry has appointed a three-member fact-finding commission headed by LHC Registrar to make a preliminary assessment of the killing of three judges and five prisoners during a hostage drama in a Sialkot jail.

During his visit starting on Monday, LHC Registrar Sheikh Abdur Rashid, assisted by two other members, will talk to the Sialkot jail authorities about the incident. He will present his findings to the chief justice.

According to informed sources a decision about initiation of a judicial probe into the incident would be made after the assessment of the findings of the fact-finding commission.

The sources said that two options were under consideration in this regard: either the provincial government could send a formal request to the chief justice in writing under the Inquiry and Commission Act, 1911, for holding a judicial probe, or the chief justice might use his discretionary powers under Article 199 and Section 190 CrPC to appoint an inquiry commission to investigate the incident.

“As no formal request was received from the provincial government the CJ decided to appoint a fact-finding mission before a judicial probe,” LHC sources said.

They said that the Registrar’s visit to the Sialkot jail should not be taken as initiation of a formal judicial inquiry.

While giving a likely reason for deferring a formal judicial probe, the sources said it might be too early to hold such a judicial inquiry as currently the entire provincial judiciary was in a big shock and demoralised in the aftermath of the incident.

“Most of the subordinate judiciary’s judges are currently feeling insecure to visit the jails even for holding the jail trials and this might even delay such trials for a while,” the sources claimed.

As ordered by the LHC in one of its recent judgments, every DSJ, who is a member of the provincial jail reforms committee, is supposed to visit the provincial jails in the last week of every month to asses general conditions prevailing in prisons like the number of prisoners, security arrangements and cases of those prisoners serving additional jails terms in default of fine awarded by the trial courts.