ISLAMABAD, Nov 17: The Supreme Court will hear six types of cases urgently from January next year including those concerning maintenance charges and custody of minors. Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry said this in a meeting with members of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) here on Thursday.

Mr Chaudhry said wives were the most neglected people of the society and needed timely justice because husbands seldom paid them.

In cases seeking custody of minors, he said, sometimes children were shifted to countries like Canada and it was very difficult for the apex court to bring them back. This issue could be solved by taking up such cases on urgent basis, he added.

The chief justice said the bail and eviction matters would also be taken up urgently either by the benches or by the court. He said the lawyers must also decide what were “urgent” matters. He said urgent cases would be taken up a day after their filing or at least within the same week.

He said the cases seeking recovery of money as well as those dealing with tax evasion would also be put on urgent list.

Narrating the demands of the lawyers, the Supreme Court Bar Association president, Mohammad Qayyum Malik, said that a cause list should be made available to the lawyers to show that which cases the apex court would be taking up in the next three months. He said unfortunately the lawyers had not yet received the cause list of the cases that would be taken up next week.

He demanded that police should be shifted to the basement of the Supreme Court building because they stayed among the lawyers that told upon the working environment.

Mr Malik said the SCBA had 1500 members, however, there was no proper seating arrangement. He said there was no parking lot on the court premises where the lawyers could park their vehicles.

He demanded construction of a separate building in Quetta for the Supreme Court bench. The SCBA president demanded reconstruction of the high court building in Abbottabad, as it was destroyed in the October 8 earthquake.