THE phrase ‘speedy justice’ has become almost a platitude. Judges and politicians have uttered it ad nauseam; the latter have set up special courts in a superficial attempt to facilitate its dispensation. Militants in Swat and the northern areas have even used the concept to ‘justify’ their brutal actions. Indeed, many of Pakistan’s problems can be traced to the lack of mechanisms of justice that are responsive to the people’s needs. Nevertheless, that does not mean the situation is immutable. One should, therefore, welcome the words of Chief Justice Saqib Nisar on Wednesday at an event in Quetta attended by members of Balochistan’s higher judiciary, where he emphasised the role of the bench in providing swift justice. Highlighting its failures in this respect, he pointed out that thousands of cases have been languishing in courts for decades.

To elucidate further, there are over 2m cases pending before various courts in Pakistan, a large majority of them in the lower judiciary. Shockingly, it takes between 20 to 30 years for a moderately complex civil case to be resolved; the pendency for criminal cases is only marginally less. Studies indicate that two-thirds of the total prison population in Pakistan comprises undertrial inmates; in several instances, prisoners have been acquitted after enduring years of incarceration. Shortage of human resources, including state prosecutors and counsels; inefficient case management; outdated court procedures; incompetent police investigations; and corruption, particularly in the lower courts, etc give rise to interminable adjournments, and sometimes appalling miscarriages of justice. Among the most egregious examples of the latter must rank the case of two brothers who were acquitted of murder by the Supreme Court in 2016 after decades behind bars, only for it to be discovered they had been executed the year before.

Such a dysfunctional system gives rise to further injustices as people take recourse to informal mechanisms of dispute resolution, including jirgas and panchayats whose ‘verdicts’ often violate fundamental rights, especially with regard to women. Demonstrating its willingness to settle for half-baked measures in lieu of actual reform, the National Assembly passed a bill last year giving legal cover to such regressive bodies, ostensibly to address the problem of judicial delay. The fact is, neither the government nor the judiciary has made any coherent and sustained effort to fix Pakistan’s broken criminal justice system. Only former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry attempted to clear the case backlog, at least in the superior courts. While the recently expressed sentiments of the current chief justice are laudable, the apex court has been unable to find the time outside taking suo motu notices to do the same, a step that would at least signal some movement towards speedy justice. It also falls to the government to bring in legislation to simplify cumbersome, colonial-era court procedures. Speedy justice should become a reality, not remain an aspiration.

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2018