LAHORE: A full bench of the Lahore High Court has issued a show-cause notice to Advocate General of Punjab Ahmad Awais under the Contempt of Court Ordinance, 2002 for his contemptuous conduct he showed the other day during announcement of an interim order about the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) formed by the provincial government to hold a fresh probe into 2014 Model Town incident.

The three-judge bench in its written order observes, “The conduct of Advocate General and other law officers before this court is highly contemptuous. It shows that the Advocate General and other law officers wanted constitution of Bench of their choice.”

Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan headed the bench that also had Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmad Khan and Justice Aalia Neelum.

Though the suspension of the JIT came with a majority decision (Justice Qasim Khan dissented), the bench had a consensus in taking exception to the conduct of the AGP and other law officers.

“We observe that a sad incident took place in court, which had never ever happened in the history of the Lahore High Court,” the judges say in the order.

Mr Awais, along with dozens of other law officers, had appeared in court around 6pm when the judges were going to announce the verdict they reserved before the Friday prayer and taken possession of the rostrum.

The principal law officer had started shouting that the court could not pass any interim order without affording him opportunity of hearing. He further said he was planning to boycott the proceedings.

“He was warned time and again to control his volume but he and other law officers kept on shouting in the court and tried to pressurize the court so that if any adverse order is going to be announced that may be changed in his favour,” the order recalls the situation.

“It is evident from the perusal of the record that no notice so far has been issued to the respondents in this case and in our humble view there was no need to hear the respondents at limine stage for passing an interim order in favour of the petitioners,” reads the order.

The bench states that the court started hearing of the case at 10:45am and kept on hearing for almost one hour and Assistant Advocate General Junaid Razzaq was also present in the court and he was called on the rostrum but he did not opt to advance arguments.

Terming the conduct of AGP Awais highly contemptuous, the bench issued a show-cause notice to him with a direction to submit a reply as to why contempt proceedings under sections 3 and 5 of the Contempt of Court Ordinance, 2002 read with Article 204 of the Constitution may not be initiated against him. The bench would resume hearing on April 1.

MAIN CASE: Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan in his dissenting note states, “I am afraid, the result of suspending the operation of the impugned notification would amount to stay of investigation and as per documents appended with these petitions, the earlier reports filed under section 173 Cr.P.C. are in fact incomplete challan, therefore, the investigation cannot be hampered and High Court cannot interfere in the investigation process.”

He relies upon a Supreme Court judgment in case of “Shahnaz Begum versus The Hon’ble Judges of the High Court of Sindh and Baluchistan and another” (PLD 1971).

However, the majority view relies upon Supreme Court judgments titled “Qari Muhammad Rafiq vs. Additional Inspector General of Police (Inv) Punjab and others” (2014 SCMR 1499) and “Muhammad Nasir Cheema versus Mazhar Javed and others” (PLD 2007 SC 31), which rule that after framing of charge and taking cognizance by the learned trial court, investigation cannot be changed.

Khurram Rafiq and other police officials facing trial in the Model Town case, had filed the petitions challenging the legitimacy of the new JIT.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2019