PESHAWAR, Sept 11: Police have found a way to flout an amendment made to the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) under which no woman, suspected in the Offence of Zina Ordinance, could be arrested without prior permission from a court of law. Police have been picking up women and registering FIRs against them under section 294 of the Pakistan Penal Code, which deals with obscene acts in public.

Legal experts pointed out that section 294 of PPC applied to acts committed in public, but police had been applying it also to suspects arrested from houses.

According to some recent cases, instead of mentioning that suspects were picked up from inside a house police wrote in FIRs that they had been arrested from public places.

The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act No 1 of 2005 was enacted on Jan 11, 2005, inserting a new section ‘156B’ in the CrPC. It made mandatory on police that investigation against a woman accused of committing the offence of fornication or adultery should not be conducted by an officer below the rank of a superintendent of police.

Also, offences under the Hudood ordinance were made non-cognizable and no woman could be arrested without court permission.

“The parliament inserted section 156B in the CrPC in good faith so as to minimize the misuse of Hudood ordinance, but police are habitual of misusing the law,” said chairman of the Voice of Prisoners,

Noor Alam Khan.

Section 294 of the PPC states: “Whoever, to the annoyance of others; a) does any obscene act in any public place, or b) sings, recites or utters any obscene songs, ballad or words, in or near any public place, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine, or with both”.

On Friday night, C-division police arrested three men and a woman from a flat on the charge of trying to commit adultery. However, in an apparent attempt to avoid legal complications regarding the arrest of a woman, police registered the FIR under section 294 of the PPC instead of the CrPC. The detainees were granted bail on Saturday by a judicial magistrate.

Similarly, five women were picked up recently without court permission from a posh locality on the charge of running a brothel. They were also booked under section 294 of the PPC.

A police official told Dawn that the amendment to the CrPC was not practicable. “What will we do when we find two persons committing adultery or fornication? Will we ask them to continue their act till we return back to arrest them after getting permission form the court?” asked the official. He said they had no other option but to apply section 294 of PPC.

Shahnawaz Khan, a high court lawyer, said that even section 294 could not be applied in an arbitrary manner. “Only that person could be arrested who does anything obscene to the annoyance of public,” he added.