Records of cases in the Rawalpindi district from Jan 2018 onwards are kept in the new judicial complex and have also been digitised. Records from 2017 are being digitised.

However, those from 1860 onwards are kept in two halls constructed in the district courts by the British.

The record room of the Rawalpindi district and its seven tehsils including Murree, Gujar Khan, Taxila, Kahuta, Kotli Sattian and Kallar Syedan was established by the British in 1860 and the cases decided by magistrates, civil judges, naib tehsildars and district collectors are housed here.

Two main halls were constructed in the district courts for keeping judicial and revenue records when the British occupied Rawalpindi after the 1857 Independence War in Delhi, when the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was defeated by the East India Company and the Indian subcontinent was declared a colony of the British crown.

Up until 1962, Islamabad was part of the Rawalpindi district and records of this area from that time are also in this room.At that time, two courts were operating in the district and the record room was enough for their records.

Now, more than 200 courts are working in the seven tehsils of the district and the cantonment areas.

The records are kept on shelves made of wood and steels.

The stairs and railings are of iron and brass and the old doors, installed a century and a half ago, are still intact. The iron and brass used in the infrastructure have not rusted.

However, there are heaps of files and papers on the floor as the shelves are full of records.

“The room was constructed for keeping the records of just a few courts but we now keep those of more than 200 courts in the district here and we are short of space,” an official of the record room told Dawn.

He said all sorts of records are kept in the building such as revenue, criminal and civil cases, family matters and when the courts require them, the record is provided once the litigants pay the fee.

“Previously, the record was preserved in canvas bags to protect the papers from damage but we are not provided with these anymore and the records are either stored in the open or in sacks,” he said.

He added that there is also shortage of staff in the record room, which has three clerks, a peon and a basta bardar or a bag carrier. He said the record room requires 30 more employees to bring copies of the old cases to litigants.

“There is no routine for conducting fumigation and the records are getting damaged as they are not stored properly. I have not seen any effort for improvement in the last 25 years,” he said.

The adjacent hall caught fire in 2002, he said, where the records of criminal cases pertaining to Pakistan Penal Code’s section 302 was maintained. However, he said the records of revenue and other cases were saved.

Though the Victorian style building itself is in good condition, the record keeping is unsatisfactory. The record material keeps getting piled and the facility is running out of space.

On the other hand, the in-charge of the record room Naseer Ashraf, told Dawn that last year, the Punjab government had started the transfer of judicial verdicts to the new judicial complex adjacent to Jinnah Park and that the records will be digitised before they are moved.

“We had a record of judicial verdicts from 1860 to 2017 and the verdicts from Jan 2018 onwards are kept in the new judicial complex and it has also been digitised,” he said.

So far, records from 2017 have been digitised and the remaining will be completed in the coming years, Mr Ashraf said.

“At present, only judicial verdicts are being digitised and there is no such plan for criminal and revenue records,” he said.

He said the land revenue record from the British Raj is still available at the record room.

“The record of the land, which was given to local elites, soldiers who served in the British forces on various occasions, especially in the World War, is here, he said.

The official said the fire-safety arrangements are insufficient. He said a proposal has been forwarded to the government for funds which will soon be allocated.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2018