LAHORE: Opposing judicial activism, Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Saeed Khan Khosa said on Saturday that the Supreme Court did not need to “jump in” by taking suo motu notice at the premature stage of a case, particularly when it is the court of last resort.

There was a time when an incident would take place in the evening and during the night a notice was taken by the Supreme Court and the next morning the senior officers would run to Islamabad to appear in court rather than going to the place of occurrence and attending to the situation, said the CJP while addressing a programme on police reforms held at the Punjab IGP office.

“That I thought was not correct,” Chief Justice Khosa said, adding that court intervention could be justified in a situation when officials were not tackling the situation. He said if the officials were doing their job and attending to any emergency situation, there was no need for the apex court to jump in.

Timely intervention by senior officials of relevant departments, including police and political administration, to tackle any situation in case of a major incident would hardly leave any need for the SC to jump in at a premature stage, the chief justice observed. “Particularly when the Supreme Court is a court of last resort, how can it be afford to become a court of first resort?” he remarked.

Questions how SC can afford to become a court of first resort, particularly when it is the court of last resort

Justice Khosa said if the SC interfered in a case on day one, the whole process of justice would be retarded. He said he handled some cases in which the apex court had taken suo motu notice years ago, followed by certain directions but later it transpired at the stage of appeal that the facts of the case were entirely different. “But our hands were tied because a judgement had already been rendered right after the incident by the Supreme Court,” he added.

“Such premature interventions are ill-advised. So as far as I am concerned I have exercised restraint,” the CJP reiterated before discussing the steps taken for police reforms.

He shared with the audience that the SP complaint centres established at the district level had attended to 122,000 complaints of citizens and 95 per cent of the complainants were satisfied as they did not go to any court for redress of their grievances. He said such steps had been contributing to reducing the burden of cases on courts.

Chief Justice Khosa pointed out that a judge of a high court was proceeded against by the Supreme Judicial Council merely on the allegation that he had humiliated and insulted a police official during court proceedings. He regretted that some investigating officers were involved in presenting false evidence before courts to prove the accused persons guilty. Such officers had to be punished under perjury charges, he said. “If a witness cannot speak truth he/she should not seek justice,” the chief justice added.

Earlier, at a meeting of the Police Reforms Committee the CJP appreciated efforts of committee members for making the process of police reforms successful.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2019