SC seeks details of ATC cases transferred to regular courts

ATC judges also ordered to reopen all cases kept on dormant files

KARACHI: The Supreme Court (SC) has sought the details of all the cases, which the 19 anti-terrorism courts (ATCs) had transferred to ordinary criminal courts, declaring them not related to ‘terrorism’ during the last one year.

The apex court also ordered the judges of the ATCs in the province to reopen all the cases kept on dormant files for want of absconding criminals.

The apex court’s monitoring judge for the ATCs, Justice Amir Hani Muslim, sought these details while presiding over a meeting to review the performance of the ATCs in the province at the Karachi Registry on Saturday. He directed the Sindh High Court’s (SHC) monitoring judge for the ATCs in Sindh, Justice Muhammad Farooq Shah, to ensure that in the future such areas are taken care of.

Justice Muslim said the judges of the ATCs are required to deliver more and cases needed to be decided expeditiously. He directed that in future there should be proper case management so that the witnesses, who appear in courts, should not leave the court unless they are examined.

He asked the SHC’s administrative judge to ensure that the cases, which have been kept on dormant files by the ATCs, should be reopened and the prosecutor as well as the relevant SP or officer in charge of the police stations concerned, should be made responsible for the arrest of the absconders.

He directed that a detailed report about the dormant cases on the files of the ATCs across the province, should be placed in the next meeting with the efforts the police had made in apprehending the absconders. The SC monitoring judge ordered the Karachi AIG to appear on the next meeting with the report reflecting the number of absconders who were arrested after the direction issued on December 12, 2015.

SHC’s administrative judge was tasked to collect details of the cases, which, after cognisance, were transferred to sessions courts by the ATCs from January 1, 2015, to date. He was also directed to submit a report, which must contain the orders passed by the ATCs’ judges under section 23 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

Need for a laboratory

Justice Muslim noted that a number of cases of explosives substances are being tried in ATCs and the anti-terrorism law requires that in order to convict an accused, a laboratory report has to be produced to show that the material recovered was explosive in nature.

Prosecutor-general Shahadat Awan said that the Sindh government does not have the facility of a laboratory that can determine the nature of explosives material. “In [the] absence of the laboratory, matters are being relied on the reports of Bomb Disposal Unit, which is not admissible as evidence in the court of law,” he admitted.

The SC judge directed the chief secretary and the home secretary to immediately take steps to ensure that a forensic laboratory, having required infrastructure to determine the nature of substance, be established on a priority basis so that the cases in ATCs should not fail on that account.

He also directed the chief secretary to appoint a qualified person on the post of the chemical examiner while the laboratory should also be equipped with modern technology, as the reports of the nature has far-reaching effects on the criminal trial.

“Serious efforts are required to be made by the Sindh government to improve the working of these laboratories and reports submitted by the Forensic Science Laboratory,” remarked Justice Muslim.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st, 2016.