SC verdict on criminal transfer

We have a high share of miscreants and any of those imported from abroad must be handled tactfully

The implications of the apex court ruling in which a three-judge bench concluded that a criminal transferred to Pakistan from a foreign land must be tried under local laws are several. The relief in this ruling is that if a sentence is incompatible with local laws, the former can be adopted to be made compatible. It is a matter that required focus because we have a pattern of Pakistanis entering foreign countries and creating a ruckus, sometimes becoming entangled with the law and then remembering the motherland when it comes to evading punishment. We have a high share of miscreants and any of those imported from abroad, especially via special treaties, must be handled tactfully.

One puzzling aspect mentioned in the verdict is that once a criminal is handed over, Article 45 of the Constitution of Pakistan allows for him or her to be pardoned by the president. There are obvious loopholes here. If the criminal has some type of connection, he could excuse himself from the law. This is relevant because we have several wanted high-profile Pakistanis sitting abroad, especially in the United Kingdom. It will be intriguing to see how the new verdict might apply to them in the future, should they return to Pakistan.

The crime of Asjad Javed, on whose case the SC gave the verdict, was a conspiracy to transport 196 kilogrammes of cocaine and even he managed to exit the central jail via an interior ministry connection. Oddly enough, the way to get one’s sentence pardoned under the aforementioned article is to also go through the interior ministry. In this respect, the verdict appears lenient. Future persons to whom this law could apply, if they are convicted abroad and returned to Pakistan via the UK’s Transfer of Offenders Ordinance 2002 as in Asjad Javed’s case, are already well connected. The risk then is that rather than facing consequences for treason or other anti-state actions, they would be excused. In such a case, we would perhaps wish the laws of the foreign land applied completely.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th, 2017.

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