Tricky compensation

Court wants land allocated to the legal heirs of the deceased lawyers to be transferred to the Balochistan Bar Council

It is hard to imagine anyone arguing in favour of callously limiting compensatory benefits for the heirs of those who lose their lives in acts of terror. And yet Advocate General Amanullah Kanrani appearing before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court appeared to do so on Monday when he claimed that the Balochistan government had not promised jobs to the heirs of those slain in last August’s suicide blast in Quetta. Maybe so but couldn’t that be done anyway? By discounting lawyers as the only victims of the Quetta carnage and admitting that policemen and journalists were among the fallen the advocate general has not exactly weakened the case for compensation. But his suggestion of discord among the heirs of lawyers over who will take up government service or be entitled to compensation money seems to be a poor argument. Both the law officer and the Balochistan government would rather give compensation only to the widow or the father of a deceased lawyer. Apparently the list provided to the provincial government for providing jobs to the heirs contained the names of 46 brothers of the deceased lawyers. This is hardly the time or the place to quibble over the true legal heirs of the Quetta blast victims.

The court has ordered the lawyers’ groups to submit before the provincial authorities a trust deed within a month for creating an endowment fund for the welfare of the legal heirs. The court also wants the five acres of land earlier allocated to the legal heirs of the deceased lawyers to be transferred to the Balochistan Bar Council. Once development work is initiated there, the plots could be awarded to the legal heirs after their demarcation. The issue of securing employment for the legal heirs of the deceased victims will now be looked after by a special committee consisting of high court judges and bar council members. 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2017.

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